cow.] JAMES' BAY. 53 J 



rushes through the gorge in a mass of foam, with huge waves rising 

 thirty and forty feet high, the whole forming a wonderfully wild and 

 .grand scene. 



The portage past this obstruction passes over the hills on the west Portage two 



1 ° r r miles. 



side, and is rather more than two miles long. Leaving this gorge, the 

 valley gradually widens out to half a-mile, and the river again flows 

 towards the north-west, with an even current of three miles an hour, 

 for eight miles and a-half, where, again narrowing to 100 yards, it 

 takes a short bend to the east, and again to the north for three-quarters 

 of a mile, where it breaks through a range of hills rising 500 feet 

 above it. and falls sixty-five feet over a sharp ledge. Turning west- 

 ward, and again widening out to one-third of a mile, the river flows at 

 the rate of four miles per hour in an uninterrupted course, ten miles, 

 to its mouth. 



Below the forks the hills along the river rise from three to five hun- 

 dred feet in elevation above its surface. They reach their highest 

 altitude near the last fall and then gradually decrease towards the 

 coast where they average about three hundred feet. No stratified drift 

 deposits were seen along the sides of the river valle}' until the Indian 

 portage route was reached. Prom hero, stratified sands and gravels of 

 fluviatile origin were observed on the hill sides up to elevations of one 

 hundred feet ; above this the small amount of loose material is wholly 

 boulder till. The erratic boulders are not scattered so thickly over the 

 bare hills as they are farther inland. From the forks along the valley 

 to the canon, stratified sand and gravel are deposited along the hill 

 sides up to an elevation of one hundred feet where a marked terrace is 

 observable. 



Below the canon the river has cut banks varying from twenty to 

 fifty feet high. The lower parts of these are composed of about thirty 

 feet of light blue clay overlaid with ten feet of sand, which in turn is in 

 places capped with a thin deposit of gravel. No fossils were found in 

 these beds, although they are probably of marine estuarine origin like 

 those nearer the mouth of the river. 



From the lower fall to the mouth of the river the channel is cut out 

 •of deposits of clay, capped with sand, which form a terrace of seventy- 

 five feet elevation in the valley between the rocky hills. The clay beds 

 are full of Post Tertiary marine fossil shells : the sand above holds no fos- 

 sils. Between the rocky hills and the sea shore on the north side of 

 the river is a sandy plain two miles broad and one hundred feet high 

 at the base of the hills, it slopes away to the shore, is covered only 

 with coarse grass and is wholly devoid of trees. 



On the south side a like plain fills a broad valley between the inland 

 hills and those forming the south point of the river. The head of tide 



