8 Dr. Bigsby's Sketch 0/ the Topography 



few boulders : sometimes these banks are of large size and two 

 in number, but more usually tliey are cut up by torrents and 

 rains into mounds and knolls ; where they do not exist, the 

 ridge is a steep slope of woods and pasturage, with here and 

 there interrupted ledges of rock. At the village of Grimsby it 

 is rendered very picturesque by being crowned at a saliant 

 angle by a massive cliff resting on a slope of ruins, and half- 

 buried in large elms and pines. At Stoney Creek the height 

 subsides to 130 lo 160 feet; but about half a mile behind it 

 there is another, an upper ridge, continuous for some miles. 

 It is most probably an offset from that below. 



The flat beneath this ridge, or " Mountain," as it is called 

 here, is not much above the lake at the west end; but in the 

 middle and eastern parts it is in gentle swells, which are forty 

 and eighty feet high at the foot of the ridge. They are cut 

 through by numerous rivulets nearly to the level of the lake, 

 and display a vast deposit of red clay and a good many boul- 

 ders, and now and then some sand, of which there is a large 

 bed near St. Catherine's, and therefore it still remains in the 

 state of a pine-wood. 



This is the most beautiful and most improved part of Upper 

 Canada. 



Having at some length described the position and magni- 

 tude of Lake Ontario, and the general features of its environs 

 (excepting its outlet), I shall now point out the nature and form 

 of its shores, rivers, and islands. 



The margin of this lake, with few exceptions, is low, and 

 consists chiefly of beaches lined with pebbles of limestone, 

 which are sometimes washed up in ridges*, supported in tlie 

 rear by low banks of soil, &c. Such is the shore in much of 

 the middle part of the lake, both on the north and south sides. 

 Banks of earth, clay, or ferruginous sand, full of primitive and 

 other boulders, are also frequently submitted to the abrasion 

 of the waves, as about Sodus on the south shore, and in the 

 Bay of Quinte, &c. Six miles east of York these banks, con- 

 sisting of fine sand, clay, and marl, rise to the height of 250 to 

 300 feet in precipices, fissured vertically when composed of the 

 last two materials. At the angles of the indents into which the 

 coast is broken, these precipices project into the lake in lofty 

 needle-shaped pyramids, while the interior of the ravines and 



* It is important to observe, that for many miles we?t of Presquisle on 

 the north shore, and especially at the distance from it often miles, ancient 

 beaches (fifty to four hundred yards from the present waters and ten to 

 twenty-five feet above them) range in certain [)laces in irregular parallelism 

 with the lake border, in the form of long and large naked heaps or banks 

 of sand and boidders, now deserted by the waters. 



coves 



