56 THE GEOLOGY OF MINNESOTA. 



[Allen, 1832. 



west he saw distinctly "a range of almost mountains, covered with pine, 

 which was undoubtedly the chain dividing us from the waters of the Red 

 river." Respecting the "Julian sources" Lieut. Allen says: "There is, how- 

 ever, a little stream, Turtle river, entering Cass lake from the north, iu the 

 route of traders to Turtle lake and Red lake, but it is a very small and insig- 

 nificant stream, and is only forty-five miles in length." On leaving Lac la 

 Biche he found the Mississippi twenty feet broad and two feet deep with a 

 current two miles per hour. It soon ran through a chain of high pine hills, 

 where the channel contracted very much and numerous rapids occurred, ot 

 very great fall over boulders of primitive rock, the river running for a dis- 

 tance in a deep ravine. 



Lieut. Allen made a series of portages, and traverses of little lakes, 

 from the south end of Leech lake "to Long lake, the source of Crow Wing 

 river. These portages were all short, and over pine ridges, with yellow and 

 pitch pine; the lakes were deep, clear and beautiful, with pine hills coming 

 down to the water. The lakes had neither inlet nor outlet, and from the 

 summits of the hills several could be seen at once. Long lake is only the 

 beginning of a chain of eleven pretty little lakes near together, from two 

 to five miles in length, from which the Crow Wing takes its rise. " 



In descending the Crow Wing river Lieut. Allen mentions the Leaf 

 and the Shell rivers, but gets their names interchanged; also the Long 

 Prairie river, but he does not name it on his map. 



LIEUT. ALLEN ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 



At the "little falls" he describes the river as forming a chute, and con- 

 tracted from 300 yards to fifty yards, the fall amounting to ten feet in sixty, 

 " through a formation of talcous slate rock, the first rock we had seen in 

 place since leaving the falls of Pacagama. A little further down we passed 

 Pike rapids, and the site of Pike's blockhouse, where Lieut. Pike wintered 

 his command in 1805-'6 ; and a little further a chain of rapids called the 

 ' grand rapids,' where the river runs over an extensive rock formation of 

 granular quartz." He also mentions another rapid at the mouth of Elk 

 river, and the "big falls" at the mouth of Sac river, and a short distance 

 above tne latter the mouth of the Little Sac, or Wattah, river ; also, the 



