igii] The Coppermine Country 217 



native copper. The Indians dig wherever they observe the prehnite 

 lying on the soil, experience having taught them that the largest pieces 

 of copper are found associated with it. We did not observe the vein in 

 its original repository, nor does it appear that the Indians have found it, 

 but judging from the specimens just mentioned, it most probably tra- 

 verses felspathose trap. We also picked up some fragments of a greenish- 

 grey coloured rock, apparently sandstone, with disseminated variegated 

 copper ore and copper glance; likewise rhomboidal fragments of white 

 calcareous spar, and some rock crystals. The Indians report that they 

 have found copper in every part of this range, which they have examined 

 for thirty or forty miles to the N.W., and that the Esquimaux come hither 

 to search for that metal. We afterwards found some ice-chisels in pos- 

 session of the latter people twelve or fourteen inches long, and half an 

 inch in diameter, formed of pure copper. 



"To the northward of the Copper Mountains, at the distance of ten 

 miles in a direct line, a similar range of trap hills occurs, having, however, 

 less altitude. The intermediate country is uneven, but not hilly, and 

 consists of a deep sandy soil, which, when cut through by the rivulets, 

 discloses extensive beds of light-brownish red sandstone, which appears 

 to belong to the new red sandstone formation. The same rock having a 

 thin slaty structure, and dipping to the northward, forms perpendicular 

 walls to the river, whose bed lies a hundred and fifty feet below the level 

 of the plain. The eminences in the plain are well clothed with grass, and 

 free from the large loose stones so common on the Barren Grounds, but 

 the ridges of trap are nearly destitute of vegetation. 



"Beyond the last-mentioned trap range, which is about twenty 

 miles from the sea, the country becomes still more level, the same kind 

 of sandstone continuing as a subsoil. The plains nourish only a coarse 

 short grass, and the trees which had latterly dwindled to small clumps, 

 growing only on low points on the edge of the river under shelter of the 

 high bank, entirely disappear. A few ranges of trap hills intersect this 

 plain also, but they have much less elevation than those we passed higher 

 up the stream. 



"The river in its section of the plain, as far as Bloody Fall, presents 

 alternately cliffs of reddish sandstone, and red-coloured slaty indurated 

 clay or marl, and shelving white clay banks. At Bloody Fall, the stream 

 cuts through a thick bed of dark, purplish-red felspar rock, similar to that 

 observed at the Rocky Defile, and associated, as at that place, with a 

 rock composed principally of light red felspar and quartz, but which is 

 probably a species of red secondary granite. At the Bloody Fall, the 

 felspar rock is covered to the depth of six or seven hundred feet with a 

 bed of greyish white, and rather tenacious clay, which being deeply 



