60 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



Sandy Bay," certainly quite descriptive of the place, but they were 

 not unanimous, some of them maintaining that nobody could say what 

 it meant. It was a pretty hard pull to the factory, half a mile up on 

 the left bank. Our approach had been already announced, probably 

 by the Indian whom we saw on the beach, and we found Mr. Swanston, 

 the gentleman in charge, at the landing when we arrived. He received 

 us kindly, and showed us where to pitch our tents, in an open sandy 

 space behind the factory, surrounded by whitewashed cabins, and the 

 birch-bark lodges of the Indians. A large seine was suspended 

 from a series of poles, and, near the water, a platform for dressing 

 and packing fish. 



This open space was bounded on the west by a steep ridge of 

 stratified sand and gravel, some sixty feet high, cut through by the 

 present channel of the river, and also by an ancient, now deserted 

 channel further south. The river just above the factory takes a 

 sharp turn to the north, doubling back in a direction nearly parallel 

 to its course below. The interval between the factory and the lake, 

 is thus a peninsula, the base of which is cut across by the former chan- 

 nel. It is evidently a range of sand-dunes, thrown up by the winds and 

 waves, so as to divert the stream from a direct passage to the lake, 

 to a course for some distance nearly parallel with it. From its mouth, 

 to the Falls, it is a series of abrupt windings, though its general 

 direction is straight ; indicating, the Professor said, a bay repeatedly 

 closed by sand-bars, one outside of the other, and successively cut 

 through by the river. It evinced, he said, a contest between the 

 river and the lake, beginning at a time when the level of the 

 water was somewhat higher than at present. 



Michipicotin is the principal post of the Hudson's Bay Co. in 

 this district. From it, the other posts are supplied, and the line of 

 communication with Hudson's Bay passes through here. It is six- 

 teen days' journey up Michipicotin and Moose Rivers to James' Bay. 



The agent's house is a little one-story cottage, uncarpeted, un- 

 painted, and if my memory serves me aright, even unplastered, with 

 panelling and projecting beams of pine, colored only by age ; yet by 

 no means uncomfortable in its aspectv The casings of darkened 

 wood, the heavy beams of the ceiling and cornice, the ancient 



