BORDERING ON VERMILION RIVER. 313 
tance from the beginning of the portage, we passed the culmination. It is made up 
of porphyritic syenite (No. 503), and ascends gradually from a swamp on the south 
side to the height of forty feet, and descends, probably fifty feet, in a mile and a 
half, to Vermilion River. 
The portage path is generally good, running over dry pine ridges, but a portion 
of it is as bad as cedar and cypress swamps can make it. Some of the low ridges 
are made of very fine drift, and in all the valleys between them swamps are found. 
6. Vermilion River—We began to descend this river on the 28th of August. At 
the point where we embarked, it comes from the southwest, and winds among drift- 
hills, with swamps intervening. Some of the swamps have small knolls in them, 
like islands, covered with cypress. The drift-hills have a few pines scattered over 
them, the other growth being small aspen, poplar, and a few small birch. They 
are generally from fifteen to twenty feet high, none of them reaching over thirty 
feet in height. 
About six miles below the portage, a tolerably fine-grained, reddish-coloured, 
syenitic granite, occurs in the bed of the river, forming rapids, around which a 
portage has to be made over a low granite ridge. (No. 504.) The ridge bears east- 
northeast, and west-southwest, and as the drift-hills have the same strike, it is pro- 
bable that they are based on similar ridges. Soon after leaving these rapids, the 
river bears to the northwest, and soon increases to sixty yards in width, which is 
increased at one point to one hundred and twenty yards. It is only at the points 
where rock ranges cross that it is contracted much below sixty yards, and then only 
for short distances. Throughout the whole distance travelled to-day, below the 
first rapids, it has scarcely any current, and is bordered by cypress and cedar swamps, 
no banks being seen at any place except where ridges of rock are met with. 
About ten miles below the first rapids, is a low ridge of No. 505, and two miles 
further, No. 506 is found resting on the gneissoid rock. The junction was not seen. 
The river here makes a bend, and the same ridge comes to the water again, when 
No. 507 makes its appearance. About one mile below this, the same rocks are seen 
again, but whether the beds of the two rocks alternate, as they do in some other 
portions of the District, I was unable to determine. The hornblendic rock pre- 
sented occasionally a massive appearance, as it does in the neighbourhood of Flint 
Lake. 
The ridges all cross the river with the same bearing, varying but little from east- 
northeast and west-southwest. Between the ranges are swamps, in every direction, 
and along the course of the river they are filled with cypress and tamerack. The 
current is obstructed by the ridges, which act as dams, giving to the stream very 
much the appearance of a succession of mill-ponds, connected by short rapids, 
and illustrates very forcibly the idea advanced with respect to the geology of the 
country in the Upper St. Croix region, and other portions of the District south of 
Lake Superior. 
About five miles below the point above designated, there is a perpendicular fall 
of eight feet, over No. 508. The rock bears east and west, and has thin seams of 
quartz between the laminz, running in the line of bearing. There are also many 
40 
