THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. VIII. 



No. III.— MARCH, 190L 



I. — Some Lake Basins in Alberta and British Columbia. 



By J. Parkinson, F.G.S. 



(PLATE VI.) 



FOE several years cai'eful study has been given to numerous lake 

 basins in England and elsewhere, with the result that many 

 previously considered as rock basins have not survived the ordeal. 

 Professor Bonney,^ who has always opposed this hypothesis in the 

 case of large lakes, has described four authentic examples from the 

 Lepontine Alps, three of which I had the advantage of visiting with 

 him ; and some few weeks before, Mr. Brend - described others 

 from Caernarvonshire. 



It may therefore be of interest to call attention to two lakes in 

 the Canadian Rocky Mountains and one from the Selkirk Range 

 which may lay claim to the rather rare distinction of being true 

 rock basins. We will take the former first. The country between 

 the Columbia River on the west and the infold of Cretaceous rock, 

 known as the Cascade trough, on the east in the neighbourhood of 

 Banff, is one of the most delightful that a traveller can enjoy. The 

 east-bound train on the Canadian Pacific Railway, after leaving 

 the Columbia River at Golden, the northern end of the Columbia 

 Kootanie Valley, follows the course of the Kicking Horse River 

 until the watershed between the Pacific and Atlantic slopes is 

 reached a little to the west of Laggan. With the exception of a long 

 strip of country between the Ottertail Mountains and the Vermilion 

 Range to the south of the Kicking Horse River, which is mapped as 

 " igneous intrusive," ^ the whole of the country comprised in the 

 area specified above is sedimentary. The line of the railway passes 

 over the Canadian Quartzite series to Silver City on the Bow River, 

 some seventeen miles to the east of Laggan. To the east of this, 

 again, lies the north-west Cretaceous fold. 



' Geol. Mag., 1898, p. 15. 

 2 Geol. Mag., 1897, p. 404. 



' '* Reconnaissance Map of a portion of the Rocky Mountains between 49° and 

 61°30"" : Canada Geol. Surv., 1885. 



DICADE IV. VOL. YIII. NO. III. 7 



