PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 63 



Our progress iuto the interior of the continent made itself apparent by an 

 increase in warmth — August 8th brought great heat, all the more unendurable 

 because a few days before we had been fairly frozen among the icebergs. In the 

 winter, however, it becomes bitterly cold ; every year the St. Lawrence fi-eezes, 

 and that so hard that they can carry the railway over it at Montreal. Still I could 

 not discover any effect of the moving ice upon the form of the river bed, or upon 

 the transport of boulders. The river bed has the same form as that of streams 

 which have but little ice, and the accumulation of boulders on the shore isconlined 

 to places where the clay has been washed doAvu. Near Jjotbinicre only, it rushes 

 along between heaps of boulders, and evidently it here traverses a mass heaped up 

 in its bed during the ice age. • 



At midday on August 9th I landed in Montreal after a journey by steamsbii) 

 of 5146 kilometers. I was strongly tempted to stay in the neigiiboui-hooci of this city, 

 where a boss of eruptive rock breaks through the superincumbent Silurian strata 

 to form Mount Royal, which again bears glacial marine deposits almost to its sum- 

 mit. But, it seemed to me more important to go on at once to Detroit in order to 

 meet the American investigators. Thither I hastened, merely making a short stop 

 in the capital of Canada for the purpose of viewing the collections of the Geological 

 Survey of Canada. I had then for the first time the pleasure of meeting with its 

 director, Dr. Geo. M. Dawson, who afterwards guided the great excursion across 

 the continent. 



In Detroit the opportunity, for which I had been secretly longing, arrived, that 

 is to make an excursion under approved guidance to the shores of the great North 

 American lakes. These waters are of sea-like dimensions, on their shores the 

 waves wash down cliffs as on the coasts of the oceans and cast up beaches, \\liile 

 the current along the coast forms spits and sandbars. All these phenomena have 

 been excellently described by Gilbert, and it was a matter of great importance to 

 me to see them as well as a number of other phenomena. Above the present shore 

 line, for instance, there extend others belonging to an earlier period of higher 

 water levels. The investigations of Gilbert, Spencer and Taylor have shown that 

 they are not parallel with the present water line, but have a regular ascent towai'ds 

 the northeast. This fact is theoretically of great importance, for it leaves but one 

 deduction possible, that of a general rise of the land which was stronger in tiie 

 northeast than in the southwest. Therefore American scientists speak quite confi- 

 dently of great elevations of the laud, of a warping, a bending of the earth's crust, 

 while Ed. Suess in Europe gave quite another significance to the phenomena on the 

 Scandinavian coast, and being dubious as to any general rising of the land referred 

 them to a movement of the surface of the sea. 



To my great good fortune Grove Kai-1 Gilbei't himself met my wishes and con- 

 ducted me around the phenomena which he discovered and described. After 

 attending the meeting of the A. A. A. S. on August 10th to 12th, and visiting 

 some sunken valleys near Detroit under Taylor's guidance, T found myself on the 

 13th in Bufililo, where I was to meet Gilbert. We first visited the counties on the 

 south shore of Lake Ontario in New York State, Avhere, like the fingers of a hand 

 a number of long narrow lakes lie between pleasant shores, then we travelled to 

 the western extremity of Lake Ontario in order to proceed along its northern bank 

 to Toronto. 



At the very start our journey afforded us an interesting phenomenon. A long 

 sandbar entirely separates the western end of Lake Ontario from the lake itself, so 

 that a wide bay stretches along beside the inland sea. On this is situated the 

 flourishing city of Hamilton, built upon a terrace which evidently i-epresents an old 

 lake shore. From this terrace a broad dike, thirty-four meters high, and scarcely 

 forty meters wide on top, extends like a railway embankment towards the north, 

 separating marshland from the bay already mentioned. It has been cut througli 

 in the middle, and one can see that it consists of coarse gravel resting on fine sand, 

 underneath which lies clay. It is a recent accumulation that we have here. The 

 inhabitants of Hamilton'have no doubt as to its origin. They regard the dike 

 rightly as the sand bank of a Lake Ontario which stood tiiirty-four meters higher 

 and which created also the present site of their city. Reside this older sandbank 

 runs a recent one that converts the west end of the lake into a great bay. 

 From here on we followed without interruption the old slu)re line— Gilbert's Inxpiois 



