﻿216 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Apr. 9, 



or moving ice. The main and isles of Lake Kaminitic being princi- 

 pally of rock and marsh, I did not notice on it any terraces. Coat- 

 ings of soil, clay, and sand exist, but they are scanty. It was not 

 in my power to examine them. 



The shores and isles are loaded, more or less, with masses of pri- 

 mitive rocks from 1 to 20 feet long, and in various states of at- 

 trition ; some as if freshly detached, others much rounded, although 

 of hard materials. These boulders are of grey gneiss, various gra- 

 nites, hornblende-rock, mica-slates, greenstone, and greenstone-por- 

 phyries, with red and white felspar, and almost every variety of 

 primitive rock ; but a careful search could not detect a single frag- 

 ment derived from the southern or Sand Hill portion of the lake. 



These primitive boulders mostly come from the river Winnepeg, 

 &c, on the north*. In a few instances I traced them to their parent 

 rock within the lake. 



They all lie naked, and stranded, as it were, without any regu- 

 larity in heaps, here and there, on isle and mainland. Some of the 

 very largest, weighing, by guess, a hundred tons each, were found on 

 the points of greatest elevation. 



As to the southern part of the lake, its northern and north-east 

 water-margins are defended with innumerable blocks (as in Lake 

 Kaminitic) ; ranging from 1 to 20 feet in length, and sometimes 10 

 feet high ; seldom rounded ; some in the water, and others on the 

 beach, more or less buried in gravel and sand, both which abound here 

 far more than in Lake Kaminitic. 



There is a longish strait near to, and north of, Turtle Portage, whose 

 north-west side is faced (plastered, as it were) with grey clayey earth 

 and boulders to the top (100 feet) ; but on its south-east side there 

 are no boulders, only a little clay. 



The same thing occurs in the first narrow east of this Portage ; and 

 again in a strait six miles to the south-east ; the boulders being in 

 extraordinary quantities, — granite, gneiss, and greenstone-porphyries. 



A solitary mound of gneiss, six miles from shore, N.W. of the 

 river La Pluie, carries a sort of rocking-stone almost as large as 

 itself, but not of the same kind of gneiss. The southern and western 

 shores are skirted by low hillocks of loose sand, with rounded and 

 angular blocks in front, and lagoons in the rear. 



This is particularly the case with the S.W. shores, where the 

 waters are shallow, and landing made difficult by the quantity of 

 boulders lying on and about the beaches, while lagoons and lakes, 

 choked with reeds, extend westward from 80 to 100 miles, — to the 

 Buffalo Plains in fact. The sand-banks here contain no erratic blocks, 

 except at one place to the east of Reed River. They do not appear 

 to be stratified. 



These south and west shores had but little mixed gravel or pebbles, 

 but almost everywhere there lies dry on the beach straw-coloured, 

 clouded, red and white, chertzy limestone in fragments, from a state 

 of mere dust to angular masses weighing a ton each. This limestone 

 is full of organic remains characteristic of the upper portion of the 



* Keating. Long's Travels to the Sources of the St. Peter, vol. ii. pp. 103, 112. 



