510 



APPENDIX. 



[No. I. 



northward at an angle of 25°. Above this portage there is a small expansion 

 of the river termed Island Lake, beyond which another contraction and fall is 

 produced by the same rock. On the north sides of Heron and Pelican Lakes, 

 the gneiss continues to form small naked eminences, but on the S.W. side of 

 the latter, there are some conical hills, perhaps four hundred feet high, which 

 laid at a distance from our route. 



Above the Pelican Lake, the rocks approaching again, confine the stream, 

 and produce several rapids. The strata here consist of gneiss approaching to 

 mica slate, and contain beds of mica slate. They are much curved and dis- 

 torted, and form bluntly conical eminences, rising abruptly from the stream. 

 There are several mural precipices on the banks of the river. At the third 

 portage, the gneiss dips to the eastward at an angle of 80°. 



The shores of the Lake of the Woods are rocky, of moderate elevation, 

 with some small conical hills, and generally pretty well wooded. The beds 



r 



of mica slate are rather more numerous than in Pelican Lake. Above four 

 miles and a half from the Three Portages, above the upper end of the lake, 



r 



there is a bed of hornblende slate enclosed in the gneiss. 



A small narrow piece of water, bounded by a continuation of the same 

 rocks, conducted us from the Lake of the Woods to the Frog Portage, which 

 forms the boundary betwixt the Mississippi and the waters falling into the 

 Saskatchawan or Nelson River, and is three hundred and eighty paces long. 

 The path leads through a low swampy wood, and over a flat tract of gneiss 

 rising only a few feet above the waters on each side. The prevailing dip of 

 the strata on our route between Beaver Lake and this place is N.E. 



The Missinippi, or English River, through which our course now laid, re- 

 sembles a chain of lakes with many arms, more than a river. The rocks to 

 the eastward of the Otter Portage are, perhaps, members of the mica slate 

 formation, but beyond that, they belong undoubtedly to the gneiss formation. 



They rise into craggy eminences, scarcely ever exceeding three hundred feet 

 in height, and form numerous groups of islands in the lakes or skirt their 

 irregular borders. It is only where the water has to force its way over a 

 ridge of rocks, that it is narrowed into the dimensions of a river, and the con- 

 traction is always accompanied by a cascade or rapid. 



An island in Race Lake, a short way above the Frog Portage, consists of 

 hornblende slate. It dips N.W. at an angle of 45° — at the Grand Rapid eleven 

 miles S.b. W. from the Frog Portage, the strata, consisting of mica slate, dip 



