AREA AXD DRAINAflE BASIX OF LAKH s( rj:j:jnn ll'J 



sota point at the Duluth end. The port n( Sui)erior is entered 

 by the natnral outlet— the i)a.ssage niahitained hy the river. 

 When tlie canal was cut by Duluth, in order that this eity nii<;lit 

 not obtain too <];reat an advantajjje over its rival. Superior had a 

 dyke erected across .Sui)erior bay, on the Duluth side of the 

 mouth of the river. It was expected that the river would not 

 waste its energies on the interests of Duluth, but |)roceed to 

 scour out the channel for Superior. With that freakiiiess so 

 characteristic of rivers (perhaps the occasion of our personifying 

 them as "she"), the stream did what was unexpected and i)ro- 

 ceeded to fill up the Superior channel. Shortly tliereafter the 

 dyke disappeared on a dark night by the aid of explosives. 



The northwest shore, from the St Louis to Thunder bay, is 

 very abrupt and rocky, backed for about half its length by the 

 " Sawtooth " or " Devil's Tracks" mountains. Along this coast, 

 a distance of 200 miles, there are only a dozen streams that de- 

 serve any better name than creek. These drain a strip along 

 the coast only a few miles wide, while behind them comes the 

 basin of the St Louis or that of the Rainy lake district. These 

 streams are all so small that the heavy surf of the coast succeeds 

 in damming their mouths with lofty beaches through which the 

 water seeps. Into Thunder bay enters the beautiful Kaminis- 

 tiquia, 150 miles long, w'ith a basin of 750 square miles. It is a 

 picturesque stream, well known to the French voyageurs, for 

 whom it was the usual route from Lake Superior to Winnipeg in 

 the good old times of the undisputed sway of the fur companies. 

 In its lower course about Fort William, its deep brown waters 

 flow lazily through a broad, flat, low delta which is still grow- 

 ing and which is bounded by distant escarpments of llat-toi)ped 

 mountains. Higher up it has numerous rapids, and few streams 

 along which it was the fate of the hardy voyageur to labor are 

 marked by more numerous portages. The sources are in Lac 

 des Isles and Muskeg lake, from the latter of which it passes as 

 the unpretentious Dog river until Dog lake is reached. It is 

 only below this lake that it receives the harmonious name of 

 Kaministi(iuia, meaning "that which goes far around." 



At the head of Nipigon bay and at the extreme northernmost 

 point of Lake Superior enters tlie Nipigon river, for whicli the 

 claim is sometimes seriously made that it is the mother stream 

 of the St Lawrence system. The claim is based on the fact that 

 this stream is the outlet of Nipigon lake, just as the St Marys is 

 of Lake Superior, and that the (Jreat Lakes consist not of five or 



