360 Our North Land. 



Knee Lake discharges at its north-east extremity by Jack Kiver 

 into Swampy Lake. Jack River runs north-eastward, and has a 

 length of ten miles in a straight line. It has a considerable descent 

 in the lower half of its course, the rapids being over ledges of Lau- 

 rentinn gneiss and mica-schist, or boulders of the same rocks. 



Swampy Lake is a narrow strip of water ten miles long, and has 

 the same north-east course as the river above and below it. Its 

 name is derived from a point composed of peat on the north-west 

 side, about half way down. The surrounding country is low, but 

 not apparently swampy. Around the upper part of the lake the 

 rocks consist of dark-coloured mica-schist, with veins and masses of 

 coarse granite. This is the last lake on the route. 



From Swampy Lake to York Factory the river curves regularly 

 round from a north-easterly to a nearly northerly course. It is 

 called Hill River as far as the junction of Fox's River, when it 

 becomes the Steel River to its confluence with the Shamattawa, 

 from which the united stream, all the way to the sea, is called 

 Hayes' River. 



Leaving Swampy Lake, Hill River, for nineteen miles, flows 

 through a labyrinth of small islands. Although the banks are low, 

 there is a very considerable and tolerably regular descent in this 

 distance, the river being broken by a great number of rapids, all of 

 which, however, may be run by boats. The bed of the river, and 

 the innumerable small islands, are mostly formed of angular blocks 

 and fragments of gneiss. At the end of the stretch, so full of 

 islands, clay banks first make their appearance on both sides, and 

 continue all the way to the sea. Brassy Hill, or The Hill, from 

 which the river derives its name, and which is the only hill known 

 to exist in the whole region, is a remarkable isolated mound of 

 gravelly earth three hundred and ninety-two feet in height. Its 

 summit lies three-quarters of a mile east from the river, and four 

 or five miles beyond the lower termination of the labyrinth of 

 islands. 



The clay banks are about thirty feet high where they begin, but in 

 descending the stream they increase, by degrees, to one hundred feet 

 in the neighbourhood of the rock, and then gradually diminish to sixty 



