From Lake Winnipeg to Hudson's Bay. 353 



From Limestone Rapids the current is swift and strong. The 

 channel is never less than three-quarters of a mile wide, and numer- 

 ous limestone reefs are met with. Here one may descend, with but 

 little paddling, at the rate of ten miles an hour. The banks are of 

 a whitish clay with but little sand, and farther down the reefs dis- 

 appear. There are islands in the river, and fifty or sixty feet of 

 water. Still farther down Seal Island is reached — twenty-five 

 miles from Hudson's Bay — where the water becomes shallower and 

 the river wider. There is a dangerous reef extending from Seal 

 Island to the south shore, which is the head of tide- water to Hud- 

 son's Bay. Here Seal River, about one chain wide, comes in from 

 the south. Flamboro' Head, a point on the north shore several miles 

 below Seal Island, is in sight of the inter-ocean. Here the ice freezes 

 nearly eight feet thick. It does not take over the river till Christmas, 

 but never forms down nearer than ten miles of the Bay in mid- 

 channel — all being open water beyond that throughout the year, 

 except close along the shore. 



Approaching Hudson's fiay we have Beacon Point on our right — 

 the narrow neck of land between the Nelson and Hayes Rivers — pro- 

 jecting into the sea. This point is low and swampy, but there is a 

 nice gravel riclge on the west side. After rounding the point and 

 entering the Hayes River the land begins to rise, until from high- 

 water mark it is thirty feet high at York Factory. Some five miles, 

 above the point Nelson River is not navigable — not even for canoes 

 — except with many portages ; nor is there at its mouth a natural 

 harbour, such as we met with at the mouth of the Churchill. How- 

 ever, Mr. Klotz is of opinion that a fair harbour can be formed on the 

 north bank of the Nelson, where, by expensive improvements, a con- 

 venient anchorage can be made. The water at the mouth of the 

 river is very shallow in every direction, and I do not think that a, 

 successful harbour can be maintained anywhere in the neighbourhood. 



The shallowness of the water and the low monotonous character 

 of the shores everywhere in this vicinity render it difficult to draw 

 a definite line between land and water. Extensive shoals stretch 

 for miles out from the extremity of Beacon Point and from the 

 shores to the north and south of the esttfaries of the two rivers. 



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