244 R. BELL — DIFFERENTIAL RISING OF LAND ALONG BELL RIVER. 



This river may be located upon the map by drawing a straight line 

 from the city of Ottawa to the southeastern extremity of James bay. 

 The central part of this line will lie near the course of Bell river, which 

 is a large north-flowing stream. In crossing the watershed from the 

 northern extremity of Grand lake on the upper Ottawa river the trav- 

 eler makes four portages and paddles over three ponds, the total distance 

 being four miles, to reach a navigable branch of this stream. On de- 

 scending this he soon comes to a succession of lakes, the last of which is 

 about 33 miles long. The stretches of river discharging these lakes into 

 one another are broken by occasional rapids, and the total descent from 

 the heigh t-of-land to the last lake may be about 150 feet. Below this 

 the northward inclination of the country becomes more gradual, and at 

 a distance of 144 miles in a straight line from the heigh t-of-land the river 

 falls into the west end of Mattagami lake. This sheet of water lies east 

 and west, or at right angles to the course of the river, and is the basin 

 which also receives the drainage of a great tract of country extending all 

 the way east to lake Mistassini, to the northward of Quebec. The united 

 waters are discharged from the north side of Mattagami lake by the 

 Nottaway, a larger river than the Ottawa, into the head of Rupert bay. 



Discovery. — The existence of the Bell river was first made known in 

 1887, when the writer, who was then at Grand lake, sent his assistant, 

 the late Mr A. S. Cochrane, to survey the upper part of a large river to 

 the northward, which we had heard of from the Indians. Mr Cochrane 

 surveyed and reported upon the first 70 miles of this stream below the 

 height-of-land, and referred to it as " the unnamed river flowing into 

 Hannah bay."* Up to that time the sketch maps of the region repre- 

 sented a stream called the Hannah Bay river or Harricanaw as traversing 

 this region, and the Bell river was supposed to be identical with it ; but 

 the writer's instrumental survey of the whole river in 1895, and also of 

 the Noddawai, demonstrated that it was a " new " river, or one heretofore 

 unknown to geography, flowing at a considerable distance eastward of 

 the Hannah Ba}^ river. The stream had no particular name among the 

 few aborigines of the region, and the present designation was suggested 

 by the director of the Ontario Bureau of Mines, through the press, in 

 October, 1895, and it appears to have been generally adopted. 



Character of the channels and flow. — This large stream flows in the cen-. 

 tral depression of the district, and receives, in all, from either side, fifteen 

 good sized tributaries. The largest of these is probably the Mekiskun, 

 which flows rapidly down the east slope of the depression and falls into 

 the lowermost large lake above mentidned. The lower 90 miles of the 

 main river, following its general course, run in a broad valley overspread 



* Summary Report of the Geological Survey of Canada for 1887, p. 24 A. 



