From Lake Winnipeg to Hudson's Bay. 361 



feet at Fox's River. An average section of these banks in the 

 interval consists of fifty feet of hard, bluish or yellowish-grey drift 

 clay in which the pebbles are not conspicuous as components, and 

 boulders are rare, overlaid by twenty or thirty feet of stratified bluish 

 clay with occasional boulders. In the last nine miles before reach- 

 ing Fox's River, Hill River winds, with great regularity of distance 

 from bend to bend, between banks about eighty feet high, and 

 three-quarters of a mile apart. They consist of forty to fifty feet of 

 drift at the base, and twenty to thirty feet of stratified bluish clay, 

 or the same thickness of yellowish-brown gravelly earth at the top, 

 with occasionally a bed of gravel between them.* 



From Brassy Hill to Fox River few islands occur in the river, 

 which has an average width of only about two chains. Several 

 rapids and chutes, over ledges of gneiss underlying the clay, occur 

 in the first thirteen miles below Brassy Hill. The last one, at the 

 end of the above distance, is one hundred and nine miles above 

 York Factory. The character of the river changes at The Rock ; and 

 from that point downward no more rapids occur all the way to the 

 sea. The stream is shallow at low water, and runs with a swift 

 current to the head of tide- water, about nine miles above York 

 Factory. 



* Dr. Bell's Report. 



