APPENDIX. 553 



miles ; the third, reckoning from Wolf Rapid, about an 

 hundred and twenty miles, — or, from the north of 

 Mount Meadowbank, more than ninety miles in length ; 

 while the less uniform line from Slave Lake, at the 

 entrance of Slave River, to the head of Artillery Lake, 

 is more than two hundred and fifty miles. 



Again, the watercourse which unites the several por- 

 tions above mentioned has likewise, in two cases, some 

 approach to parallelism ; the chain of lakes, from Lake 

 Aylmer eastward, having a direction to the south of 

 east, through a distance of nearly an hundred miles ; 

 and that from Lake Beechey to the east of Baillie's 

 River, nearly the same general direction, for about 

 eighty miles. The waters which connect Lake Pelly 

 with the sinuosities about Wolf Rapid, comprehend a 

 series of lakes of very irregular form, and the stream 

 which unites them is tortuous, but has, nevertheless, a 

 general direction nearly from west to east. 



It is almost premature to speculate on evidence so 

 scanty as that which has just been stated; but it is pro- 

 bable both that the parallel portions of the river, and 

 the less regular transverse lines which connect them, 

 are the results of geological structure. The parallel 

 lines along which the river makes its way towards the 

 north-east, from the ground dividing the water-shed at 

 Sussex Lake, — and the general course of Great Slave 

 Lake thence towards the south-west, may, possibly, 

 be longitudinal valleys between parallel ridges of small 

 elevation, directed from south-west to north-east.* 



* This, Dr. Richardson states, is the average direction 

 (or, ' strike ') of the primitive and transition strata, through 

 about twelve degrees of longitude, over which his own 

 journeys extended. It is also the direction of the strata in 



