NATURE OF THE COUNTRY. 195 



peaks — for it is seldom that you anywhere see a pointed hill top — 

 and apparently shaping the whole general appearance of hills, 

 valleys, and surrounding elevations and depressions. 



Thus thinking, we rode swiftly and pleasantly along the bay ; we 

 crossed the first portage, over a low bank, with hills on either 

 side, at a little to the right of the bottom of the bay, where 

 a rather high hill slopes to the water and forms its boundary line, 

 and descended to the first pond. This pond is on the same level 

 as the bay, and separated from it by only a low ridge of land from 

 which the rock of the region crops out on all hands. It is nestled 

 in a hollow with hills all around it while the outline, more or 

 less circular in form, encloses an area of perhaps a half a mile. 

 Across this we go, and then slowly glide along the second portage 

 which, like the ridge containing it, is nearly on a level with the 

 pond. On the right, the low, rather swampy looking level is covered 

 with the gnarled trunks and stems of the dwarf birch so common in 

 this locality, the Betula populifolia of the botanists, and the best 

 fire-wood that the region affords, while on the left we pass close 

 to a long, perpendicular wall of rock that, rising some six feet and 

 extending some fifty in an even line, abruptly ends the ridge in 

 this place ; its surface is as smooth as if polished by some mighty 

 force, and yet I saw no scratches, or even signs of cleavage any- 

 where upon its face. The extent of this portage is about the 

 same as that of the one we had recently passed. 



We now descend a little to a second pond ; a very small stream of 

 good drinking water (to which a large hole has been made through 

 the snow) runs along this path. This pond was soon passed, and 

 after ascending a low bank similar to that we crossed in going 

 to the first pond, and like it a low ridge between hills, we de- 

 scended to the river. Esquimaux or St. Paul's river, as it is called 

 — the latter being the proper name, though it figures upon the 

 charts as the former, — is peculiar in many respects. Its mouth 

 is quite large, and with several flexures or bends ; while Esquimaux 

 Island lies directly on the right hand, leaving only a small, narrow, 



