of Lake Superior. 19 



lake, and on the east of the Black River lowers in six banks, 

 Avhose summits always have a slight inclination towards the lake. 

 Their number, however, varies by the occasional coalescence of 

 one or more. Close to the river, several of the lower levels are 

 lost in one great steep, which includes a bowl-shaped cavity three- 

 quarters of a mile in diameter, open in the direction of the Black 

 River and Lake Superior, but at present being somewhat higher 

 than cither. It is a deserted bay. 



The Black River, having for some miles previously flowed 50 

 feet broad, in a deep alluvion with three large embankments, in- 

 dicating as many distinct conditions, makes an elbow round the 

 height, from whence the above-described scene is beheld, and then 

 undergoes a series of descents until it arrives at the lake, one mile 

 and a half distant. The first fall above alluded to is premised for 

 350 yards by several low cascades from three to six feet high, a 

 large granitic height being close at hand on the west also. This 

 fall is 60 feet high, and 15 feet broad at the brink, pitching into 

 a deep funnel-shaped chasm of mural black rocks, which although 

 broader above, is not more than 10 or 12 feet wide at the bottom. 

 A channel contained by high walls, 250 yards long, now conveys 

 the water to three falls of much beauty, each 12 feet high, two of 

 them being on ihe same level, at lower corners of the small basin 

 which succeeds the above channel. Escaping from the inferior of 

 these falls, the river passes on at the rate of a mile and a half per 

 hour toward the lake, with scarps of sand 150 feet high, in two 

 branches, enclosing a fertile oval islet a quarter of a mile in 

 diameter. In a few hundred yards after the re-union of these 

 branches, another succession of petty cascades occurs, which ter- 

 minates in very picturesque falls about 20 feet high, of consider- 

 able width, and subdivided into several unequal portions by an isle, 

 and by tufts of fine larch, spruce, alder, cedar, Sfc, which isle con- 

 tinues into a basin, that now occupies the interval of one-third of 

 a mile from the lake. These last falls are confined by woody 

 overhanging rocks, on the west, and by a sand bank on the east 

 side. The basin communicates with Lake Superior by a cut 80 



C 2 



