From Lake Winnipeg to Hudson's Bay. , 355 



Owing to these circumstances, the outline between the land and 

 water is widely different at high and low tide. The difficulty of 

 mapping the shore accurately is increased by the fact that the sea is 

 receding at an appreciable rate, and also from the circumstance that 

 the tides are of very irregular height, owing to the shallowness of 

 the water for Ions: distances in all directions, and the great effect 

 which the winds coasequently have in increasing or diminishing the 

 rise and fall. 



The mouth of the Nelson River at high tide has a breadth of six 

 or seven miles opposite the extremity of Beacon Point, but it con- 

 tracts rapidly, having a trumpet-like outline, and for the first ten 

 miles up, the width is from three to four miles. It continues to 

 narrow gradually to Seal Island at the head of tide- water, or twenty- 

 four miles from the extremity of Beacon Point (at high tide), where 

 it is only one mile and a half broad. Above this, it varies from half 

 a mile to a mile and a half. 



When the tide is out the greater part of the space between the 

 banks in the estuary of the river is dry, and consists of a dreary 

 stretch of mud-flats dotted with boulders, constituting a continu- 

 ation of the shoals farther out. A narrow channel, with a somewhat 

 irregular depth of water, winds down the centre of the estuary. 

 From soundings it appears to have an average depth of from two to 

 three fathoms at low tide, from a point abreast of Beacon Point, for 

 about twenty miles up. At the mouth of the river the ordinary 

 spring tides amount to about twelve feet, and the neap tides to 

 about six feet, so that, at high tide, from three to five fathoms may 

 be found throughout the above distance. 



The shallowest part of the river is abreast of Gillam's and Seal 

 Islands, or just where the tide ends and the proper channel of the 

 river begins. Here the water is only about ten feet deep. But 

 from this point upward, the average depth of the centre of the river 

 was found to be twenty feet, and sometimes over sixty feet. 



Such is a brief account of a trip from Lake Winnipeg to Hudson's 

 Bay by way of the Nelson, There is another route which leaves 

 the Nelson not far below Norway House, called the " Hayes River 

 route." This is the one usually travelled by the Hudson's Bay 



