EVIDENCE FURNISHED BY NOTTAWAY RIVER. 247 



southern extremity is being washed away by the waves. This land is 

 covered b} r a forest of small spruce trees which are being undermined 

 and falling into the lake. They have accumulated in immense numbers 

 in one of the bays and present a curious spectacle. It would be difficult 

 to understand why the flooding of the south and not of the north end 

 of this lake should take place unless we suppose that its extremities are 

 not maintaining the same absolute level. 



What appears to be an interesting piece of evidence in connection with 

 this question is afforded b} T certain long lived trees in a large swamp 

 near the headwaters of the river. Some of our trees, such as the white 

 cedar, the tamarack, and the black spruce, which grow in swamps, deiight 

 to have their roots bathed in the cool waters, but the}^ like to have only 

 so much of it and no more. Of all the trees of the forest none are more 

 sensitive than these to an overdose of water, and none die more easily 

 than they when a permanent rise in its level takes place. It may be said 

 that the life of these trees is too short to be affected by the slight rise in 

 the water from the almost imperceptible tilting of the surface; that the 

 movement is too slow to have any effect on the life or welfare of a single 

 generation of trees ; but small and gnarled and half dead as these 

 tamaracks and black spruces may appear, they nevertheless live to a great 

 age. Their wood is hard and heavy, the rings of growth being closely 

 crowded together. After attaining a certain size they retain their vitality 

 for a very long time, but do not appear to get any larger. In these 

 swamps the conditions for supporting vegetable life must be very uni- 

 form, and thus these trees can maintain their vitality for an indefinite 

 period. The Indians say that in the course of their own lives they can 

 see no change in them. In illustration of this subject it may be men- 

 tioned that an officer of the Hudson Bay Company told the writer that 

 a few y ears ago, when he was traveling on the upper part of the Mekis- 

 kun river, on approaching the foot of a fall, where they were to make 

 a portage, his old Indian guide called his attention to a dwarf black- 

 spruce tree, or rather bush, projecting from an inaccessible rock in the 

 fall, and told him that when he was a boy, more than fifty years ago, 

 that bush w T as just the same size as it is now. 



BRUSHY CREEK. 



A large tamarack and black-spruce swamp occurs along Brushy creek, 

 the highest branch of Bell river, and extends down to where it enters 

 the south end of the uppermost lake on the river. A large proportion 

 of the older and larger trees in this swamp are dead, and the others are 

 slowly dying. The lake appears to be gradually flooding back upon the 

 swamp and changing the conditions affecting these trees. Everywhere 



