AN EXPEDITION TO THE LAURENTIAN 

 HILLS. 



Bt THEODORE L. PITT. 



Several miles north of the village of Madoc, in Canada 

 West, a traveller, journeying northward, enters upon a sec- 

 tion of country to which geologists have given the name of 

 Laurentian Hills. These hills stretch from the Ottawa River 

 to Georgian Bay, and from the neighborhood of Madoc to the 

 region of the Madawaska. This portion of Canada is sup- 

 posed by geologists to be the oldest land in the world. Here 

 was the primeval continent — the first " dry land " that " ap- 

 peared " above the all-enveloping ocean, that, in those far- 

 ofi" days of creation, rolled unbroken round the globe. The 

 rocks of this region are the oldest in kind with which man 

 anywhere comes in contact. They are azoic rocks — rocks in 

 which no indications of animal life can be traced. They have 

 no fossils, and if any living creatures existed in the ancient 

 ages in which these rocks were formed, all evidences of their 

 existence have utterly passed away in the geologic revolu- 

 tions. The country is emphatically a land of hills. They 

 seldom if ever rise to the dignity of mountains, but below 

 this they are of all sizes and shapes. Generally their longer 

 axis is from northeast to southwest. The land appears as if it 

 had once been a vast sea of molten rock lashed into fury by a 

 northwest gale, or the boiling of Plutonic fires, and then in a 

 moment congealed. The region is all underlaid with rock 

 at the depth of a few feet, and it crops out continually. There 

 are visible ledges, vast beds, and bowlders innumerable. Per- 

 pendicular cliffs hundreds of feet high are found, sometimes 

 overhanging the clear waters of a lake ; at others, the lofty tops 



