CHAPTEK VI. 

 THE HOME OF TEE CARIBOU. 



Feom Lake Athabasca to the Height of Land our course 

 had been constantly up stream, but from this point to the 

 sea our way must ever be with the current. Having launched 

 our little fleet in the lake on the north side "of the watershed, 

 the new stage of the journey was begun with a strong, fair 

 breeze. 



The lake is a large one, and has been named Daly Lake — 

 after the Hon. T. M. Daly, then Minister of the Interior for 

 Canada. Towards the centre of it was discovered a penin- 

 sula, which is connected with the west shore only by a very 

 narrow neck of land, across which a portage was made. 

 .For a day and a half we were delayed here by a gale, the 

 most severe we had so far encountered. So wild was the lake- 

 during this storm that water-spouts were whirled up from its- 

 billows and carried along in great vertical columns for con- 

 siderable distances. 



Certain reonarkable physical features, in the shape of great 

 " Eskers," or high sand ridges, were also observed at this^ 

 locality. They were composed of clear sand and gravel, were 

 sixty or seventy feet in height, trended in a north-easterly 

 and south-westerly direction, were quite narrow on top, and 

 so level and uniform that they might well be taken to be 

 the remains of the embankments of ancient railways. Geol- 

 ogists, however, have another theory accounting for their 

 origin, namely, that they were formed by fissures or splits 

 in the ancient glaciers. 



On the sheltered southerly slopes of these ridges many new 



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