514 



APPENDIX. 



[No. I. 



through the soil a large mass of limestone which contains hornstone. We did 

 not ascertain whether this mass was connected with the strata underneath, 

 which consists of sandstone in plates. 



Below this, where the Washacummow, in its winding course through the 

 valley, approaches the high-bounding hills, sections of their sides, formed by 

 the ravines which opened into the river, enabled us to observe that they were 

 composed of sand more or less agglutinated by bitumen, which latter hardens into 

 slaggy mineral pitch. This sandy bed, from six hundred to eight hundred feet 

 thick, rests immediately upon yellowish- grey limestone containing many bivalve 

 shells and orthoceratites. The dip, where it could be observed, (for it was very 

 slight,) appeared to be to the northward. The limestone forms the channel of 

 the river throughout, and some portions of it, decaying more rapidly than others, 

 exhibit more plainly the shells which enter very largely into its composition. At 

 the junction of the Washacummow with the Elk River, or as it is termed, at 

 the Forks of the Athabasca, the northerly dip is more clearly discerned than 

 elsewhere. The stream here, too, has made a section of the superincumbent 

 bed of sand, upwards of one hundred and fifty feet in depth, and shews it 

 to consist of a variety of strata, having different shades of colour and 

 tenacity according to the quantity of bitumen they contain. 



The limestone, more or less thickly covered with slaggy mineral pitch, con- 

 tinues to form the banks of Elk River, as far down as Pierre au Calumet, in 

 lat. 57° 25'. The hills or banks, which bound the view on each side, do not 

 rise so high as in Clear Water River ; and we have been informed, that at a 

 little distance from the river, a plain upon a level with the summit of these 

 hills extends from near Athabasca Lake to the Clear Water River tolerably 

 well wooded, and frequented by buffalo. 



About nineteen miles below the Forks, and a mile within the right bank of 

 river, a saline sulphureous spring occurs. This spring rises from the 

 summit of a rounded eminence, which is about fifty-six yards in diameter, sixty 

 feet high, and entirely incrusted with, or perhaps in a great proportion composed 

 of, saline deposits * . This eminence is bounded on three sides by the high 

 bank of the river, which here recedes a little, and forms an even round-backed 



the 



* The following letter from Dr. Fife to Professor Jameson gives the analysis of a salt mentioned 

 ID a former page, as being found on the shores of a lake near Carlton-House, and also of the 

 incrustation just spoken of in the text: 



