30 On the Geografhy and Geology 



three miles across at the mouth. It is for the most part rocky, 

 but with occasional sandy beaches. Sixty miles from the St. 

 Louis, there is, on the main, a cliff from 350 to 400 feet high, 

 fissured perpendicularly, called (like others previously met with) 

 " La Grange." The interior is every where lofty ; and at the 

 distance of 100 miles from the above river, its hills are 600 and 

 700 feet high. Mr. Thompson has marked on his map 32 rivers 

 and brooks, inclusive of the St. Louis, in the interval of which we 

 now speak. They are mostly chains of cataracts and rapids. In 

 several instances they form groupes of three or four. A river 

 which enters the lake among high rocks, 23^ miles from the St. 

 Louis, is 180 feet broad; another eight miles and three quarters 

 further east, undergoes a descent of 40 feet at its junction with the 

 lake, but it is only 15 yards broad. Twenty-three and a half 

 miles from the St. Louis are three islets ; another 38| miles dis- 

 tant ; a fifth 49 miles ofi" in a bay ; and a sixth 57 miles from that 

 river. I have gleaned this information from the notes attached 

 to Mr. Thompson's table of courses and distances round the whole 

 lake, which he obligingly allowed me to copy. 



Mr. Schoolcraft states that the River St. Louis is 150 yards 

 broad at the mouth, but expands immediately into a sheet of still 

 water, shallow and weedy at the sides. 23 miles long, and a mile 

 in its greatest breadth; in the lower five or six miles. This 

 river rises in several branches from the small lakes in the north, 

 which communicate by portages with the streams falling into the 

 deeper fork of the River La Pluie, the outlet of the lake of that 

 name. I saw at Fort La Pluie, in 1823, Indians, who I was given 

 to imderstand, had come by this route from near the Fond du Lac 

 Superior to trade with the Hudson's Bay Company. 



The name of Fond du Lac, given by the French to the west end 

 of Lake Superior is appropriate. It is a slowly-contracting cul- 

 de-sac, 60 miles long, and from eight to ten miles broad at the 

 bottom. It commences in long. 91°, at the great promontory op- 

 posite to the Isles of the Twelve Apostles. 



To complete the tour of Lake Superior, I shall now sketch in a 

 few paragraphs the leading features in the geography of its south 



