BEACHKS NOirni OK TH K (iUKAT LAKKS III 



deep, ami must have had connections l)oth north toward an immensely 

 enhiri»:ed Hudson l)ay and east toward tlie Athintic. The rugged and 

 mountainous Michi{)icoten re^^ion, which includes the highest known 

 l)oint of Ontario, 2,120 feet above the present sealevel, must have formed 

 a lartije island. 



The other high-level beaches are 200 miles to the southeast of the ones 

 just described, on tlie waterslied between the Saint Lawrence and ilud- 

 son bay waters, near Meteor lake, 40 miles northeast of Straight Lake 

 station, on the Canadian PaciHc railway, and reachable only by cai^oes. 

 The region consists mainly of wide sand and gravel i)lains having an 

 elevation of 1,400 to 1,420 feet, with kames and also esker ridges rising 

 50 to 100 feet higher. The plains are often interrupted by kettles occu- 

 pied by lakes, one of the largest being Meteor lake itself, which is 4 miles 

 long. All these lakes have steep gravel banks, evidently not formed by 

 their own feeble waves, but due no doubt to the burying of masses of 

 ice in sand and gravel near the edge of a retreating ice-sheet. The melt- 

 ing of the buried ice gave rise to the cavities now filled by the lakes, 

 some of the smaller ones with no visible outlet. 



Meteor lake, as determined by aneroid, stands 1,393 feet above the sea 

 and is reported to be 150 feet deep. It has the not unusual feature of 

 draining both ways — to the southeast by a small stream into Wahnapitae 

 river, which eventually reaches Georgian bay, and to the north by seepage 

 through an esker ridge into Seven Mile lake, which belongs to the Mata- 

 gami chain of waters emptying into Hudson bay. This is proved by 

 the fact that a narrow bay of the latter lake, approaching within 400 feet 

 of Meteor lake, but at a level 35 feet lower, has clear water, like the lakes 

 in the gravel plain, while the rest of Seven Mile lake has the usual brown 

 water of muskeg regions. 



That the sand and gravel of these lakes on the watershed are often 

 well stratified and without the tumultuous arrangement found in kames 

 has been proved by numerous test-pits sunk for prospecting purposes. 

 Polished or striated stones have not been found in them, although the 

 gravel and stones were carefully examined to determine their origin, a 

 matter of interest, since the beds are more or less gold-bearing and have 

 been taken up as placer claims. In some cases also there are terraces 

 which must have been formed by water, as at the Onaping Gold Mining 

 Company's sluices, where one has been cut in the side of an esker and 

 covered with stratified yellow sand quite different from the bouldery 

 gravel on which it is deposited. 



The plains were probably formed of materials brought by subglacial 

 streams and dropped at the margin of the ice, but whether in local lakes 



