352 THE SOUTHERN SHORES OF LA.KE SUPERIOR. 



and behind Grand Island, they are remote from the regular line of 

 traffic, and unless the voyager on Lake Superior avails himself of a 

 canoe, or joins a pleasure party specially bent on exploring the at- 

 tractive and picturesque features of the Lake, he may pass over its 

 wide extent of waters, without obtaining more than a remote glimpse 

 of the general aspect of the cliffs which present so many striking 

 features when approached and viewed in detail. 



To the westward of Grand Island, the traveller who pursues this 

 voyage up the Lake, comes once more on rocky cliffs in the vicinity 

 of Marquette. On the Marquette Landing, — so named after Father 

 Marquette, the Jesuit missionary, by whom the Mississippi was 

 reached in 1673, — were piled the rich products of the " Jackson Iron 

 Mountain," twelve miles distant ; and in the vicinity of the Landing 

 there are groups of abraded and scratched trappean rocks, rounded and 

 worn down, excepting where some of the deeper fissures and hollows 

 lying beyond the reach of the active agent in the polishing of their ex- 

 posed surfaces, show by the contrast the force of the action that must 

 have been at work to smooth and round them into their present forms. 

 Availing myself of a pocket compass, I noted that the scratches on 

 the abraded surface of the rocks run nearly due N. and S., slightly in- 

 clining to IS". E. and S. "W. Immediately to the north of Marquette, 

 the bold promontory of Presque Isle attracts attention from its rocky 

 coast, presenting in some respects a marked contrast to the Pictured 

 Pvocks, though, like them, also indented and hollowed out into pic- 

 turesque masses, and pierced with wave-worn caverns : the work of a 

 former era, when the relative levels of the Lake and shore greatly 

 differed from their present relations to each other. The rocky coast 

 consists of a water- worn red sandstone (Potsdam ?) overlying a dark 

 weathered igneous rock, granite or trap. Of this — with the excep- 

 tion of the Pictured Eocks, the boldest coast of the whole southern 

 Lake shore, — I speak chiefly from observations made while sailing along 

 in close vicinity to the picturesque headlands which here project into 

 tho Lake. Parts of the coast which I was able to examine are granite, 

 and a bold rocky island which rises abruptly out of the water, about 

 six miles from the shore, bears the name of Granite Island from its 

 geological formation. But it is just at Presque Isle that the crystal- 

 out any appearance of wind on the Lake, the water rose and fell several times 

 during the day, from four to five feet above high water mark. The weather was 

 calm before and after the occurrence, and this was the case for a hundred miles, at 

 least to the northwest of the Island, for Captain Smithwick, of the schooDer 

 Algonquin, was that day off Copper Harbor, and nearly becalmed." 



