GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA- 



PALEOZOIC FOSSILS. 



vox,. III. 



4- The Fossils of the Galena-Trenton and Black River formations of 

 Lake Winnipeg and its vicinity. 



By J. P. Whiteaves. 



The existence of highly fossiliferous limestones on the western shor& 

 of Lake Winnipeg and in the Red River valley north of the United 

 States boundary line has long been known to geologists. 



On Lake Winnipeg these limestones appear to have been first observed 

 north of the Saskatchewan, in 1819, by Sir John Richardson, when 

 accompanying the members of the first Franklin expedition, as naturalist, 

 on their journey to the polar sea. 



In the early part of the "Narrative" of this expedition, it is stated' 

 that the party entered Lake Winnipeg, from Norway House, on the 

 night of the seventh of October, 1819, that they spent some time in 

 examining the north and part of the north-west shores of the lake on the 

 eighth and on the morning of the ninth of October of that year, that 

 they sailed for the Saskatchewan at two p.m. on the ninth of October, 

 and reached the mouth of that river, preparatory to its ascent, on the 

 midnight following. 



In another publication,* Richardson says that the strata at the First 

 and Second Rocky Points on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg, north of 

 the Saskatchewan, "contain many gigantic Orthoceratites, some of which 

 have been described by Mr. Stokes in the Geological Transactions." These 

 Orthoceratites, therefore, would seem to have been collected upon the 

 eighth or ninth of October, 1819, though Dr. Pitton, in an appendix to 

 the narrative of Captain Back's Arctic Land Expedition, says that they 

 were collected in 1820. 



However this may be, in an Appendix to the Narrative of Franklin's 

 first expedition, Richardson says that cliffs of bluish and yellowish grey • 

 limestone " appear on the west side of Limestone Bay, and continue to 

 bound the lake as far as the mouth of the Saskatchewan, and, as we have 



* Journal of a Boat Voyage through "Rupert's Land to the Arctic Sea, vol. I. (London, 

 1851), p. 65. 



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