158 EXPEDITION TO THE 



hundred feet. When we first approached the lake, it was co- 

 vered with a mist, which soon vanished and the bright sun, 

 reflected upon the sand and water, produced a glare of light 

 quite fatiguing to the eye. Our progress was in a south- 

 vvestwardly direction, along the beach, which reminded us 

 of that of the Atlantic on the coast of New Jersey. The 

 sand-hills are undulating and crowned at their summits 

 with a scrubby growth of white pine and furze •, while the 

 brow, which faces the lake, is quite bare. In the rear of the 

 hills, but invisible from the beach, spreads a level country 

 supporting a scattering growth of white pine, oak, beech, 

 hophorn-beam, (Ostrya virginica,) &c. East and west of us, a 

 continuous narrow beach curved gradually towards the north 

 and, bounded by the lake and the hills, was all that the eye 

 could observe. At our evening's encampment of the 4th of 

 June, we were at the southernmost extremity of the lake, 

 and could distinctly observe that its south-eastern corner is 

 the arc of a greater circle than the south-western. The beach 

 is strewed with fragments of rocks, evidently primitive, 

 and probably derived from the decomposition of the same 

 masses which, by their destruction, have given rise to the 

 immense deposite of sand and pebbles that forms the bot- 

 tom of the lake. These fragments, which are all rolled, 

 vary much in size ; the largest we observed weighed per- 

 haps twenty or thirty tons. They consist of granite, mica 

 and clay-slates, hornblende, &c. The hills appear to have 

 been produced by the constant accumulation of sand, blown 

 from the beach, by the strong north-westerly winds which 

 prevail during the winter season ; the sand is loose and 

 uncemented. In a few places traces of lignite and peat 

 are to be met with ; doubtless resulting from the decompo- 

 sition of the partial vegetation which grew upon these hills, 

 and which was successively destroyed and buried under 



