140 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON MARL LAKE, ANTICOSTL 



Read before the Geological Section, Sept. 2jth, i8g2. 

 • BY COL. C. C. GRANT. 



Perhaps the most interesting spot on the Island ot Anticosti to- 

 the field geologist is the small lake so appropriately named by Rich- 

 ardson in his report addressed to the late Sir Wm. Logan. He re- 

 marked, near the village of English Bay, the chief settlement on the 

 northwest shore, a little brook of milky appearance which left a con- 

 siderable deposit of carbonate of lime not only on the bed of the 

 brooklet itself but for a considerable distance into the bay. Fol- 

 lowing it up, I presume, under many difficulties, he found it pro- 

 ceeded from a swampy lake, in size and appearance not unlike 

 Medad, near Waterdown, It lies perhaps about a mile or more in- 

 land from English Bay. The inhabitants of this village, including 

 women and children, amounting to 1000 or so when I was there,, 

 were, with few exceptions, French fishermen. They build their own 

 houses of frame work, neatly constructed, internally clean, and 

 whitewashed on the outside with the marl derived from the lake, 

 Lime kilns are structures apparently unknown to these Celts, long 

 separated from the ancient stock of the mother country, France. 



From the distant shore of this lake when it is frozen over, they 

 obtain by means of dog sledges the greater part of the fuel supply. 

 A rough passage from the village to the near margin has been cut 

 through the dense bush. In winter, no doubt, it would prove more 

 practicable than it appeared to me in autumn, when obliterated by 

 a season's growth of underwood, tall ferns or branches. Indeed I 

 found the pathway so obliterated, even close to the lake shore^ 

 that I lost it completely, and, on my first visit, it must have cost me 

 some hours' hard work to worm my way through a few hundred yards, 

 exposed to gadflies and mosquitoes. With great difficulty I had a 

 light skiff conveyed over land and launched on its waters, by means of 

 which I ascertained that the Marl Lake itself is merely the outer 

 one of a chain stretching inland, connected by brooklets. There 

 is little doubt that at a very recent period they formed an uninter- 



