noh'hanne BUTE. 203 



disengaging itself from the rugged hills from which it 

 draws its supplies, makes a northerly bend nearly parallel 

 to Slave River, and then joins the Mackenzie at Fort 

 Simpson. Of this mountain stream I have already given a 

 slight notice in the Narrative (Vol. I. pp. 167 — 170.) ; and 

 I may add here that for twenty-five miles upwards from its 

 mouth it flows through sand and shale, with limestone 

 occasionally cropping out. At the end of that distance 

 there is a rapid, above which low wooded points exist, 

 with at intervals mountain bluffs coming down to the 

 banks of the river. The most remarkable of these stands 

 at the influx of the Noh'hanne River, and is named the 

 Nohlianne bute. It is the highest hill in that quarter, 

 and is about seventy-five miles from Fort Simpson. 

 Perhaps it is a member of a range whose prolongation is 

 seen indistinctly in descending the Mackenzie about half- 

 way between Hare Skin River and Fort Simpson. 

 Messieurs M'Pherson and Bell ascended it, and the latter 

 gentleman was seized with nausea and vertigo before 

 reaching its summit ; so that its altitude is probably con- 

 siderable, but the snow disappears from it in summer. On 

 its top there is a salt spring, having a basin fifteen feet in 

 diameter, which is never dry. For this notice I am in- 

 debted to Mr, M'Pherson, who brought from it some 

 fragments of limestone that were similar in lithological 

 character to those procured at the rock by the river's side, 

 described in page 182. of the first volume of the Narrative. 

 Great Bear Lake, the most northerly of the transverse 

 freshwater lakes, lies about 150 feet' above the channel 

 of the Mackenzie, and crosses the arctic circle on the 

 line where the hypogenous and silurian rocks meet. Coro- 

 nation Gulf is also excavated on the same line, which 

 has a general parallelism to the Great Slave Lake series 

 of excavations enumerated above. 



