NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION". 115 



tliose are apt to who have long labored at an object, a pleasure 

 in some measure proportioned to the exertions made. 



Any other people but the Indians would feel ill at ease in 

 dreary regions like these. But these sons of the forest appear to 

 carry all their socialities with them, even in the most forbidding 

 solitudes. They are so familiarized with the notions of demons 

 and spirits, that the wildest solitude is replete with objects of 

 hope and fear. We had evidence of this, just before we en- 

 camped on the banks of the Bezhiki, when we came to a cleared 

 spot, which had been occupied by what the Canadians, with much 

 force, call a jonglery, or place of necromantic ceremonies of their 

 priests or jossakeeds. There were left standing of this structure 

 six or eight smooth posts of equal length, standing perpendicu- 

 larly. These had been carefully peeled, and painted with a spe- 

 cies of ochrey clay. The curtains of bark, extending between 

 ihem, and isolating the powow, or operator, had been removed ; 

 but the precincts had the appearance of having been carefully 

 cleared of brush, and the ground levelled, for the purposes of 

 these sacred orgies, which exercise so much influence on Indian 

 society. 



"We were awaked in our encampment, between four and five 

 o'clock, the next morning, by a shower of rain. Jumping up, 

 and taking our customary meal of jerked beef and biscuit, we 

 now followed our guides, with alacrity, over a dry and uneven 

 surface, towards Sandy Lake. We had now been three daj^s in 

 accomplishing the traverse over this broad and elevated, yet 

 sphagnous summit, separating the valley of the St. Louis of Lake 

 Superior from that of the Upper Mississippi. As we approached 

 the basin of Sandy Lake, we passed over several sandy ridges, 

 bearing the white and yellow pine ; the surface and its depres- 

 sions bearing the wild cherry, poplar, hazel, ledum latifolia, and 

 other usual growth and shrubs of the latitude. On the dry sandy 

 tracts the uva ursi, or kinnikinnik of the Indians, was noticed. 

 In the mineral constitution of the ridges themselves, the geologist 

 recognizes that wide-spreading drift-stratum, with boulders and 

 pebbles of sienitic and hornblende, quartz, and sandstone rock, 

 which is so prevalent in the region. As we approached the lake 

 we ascended one of those sandy ridges which surround it, and 

 dashing our way through the dense underbrush, were gratified 



