





























directly into the Arctic Ocean, with one important exception. The 

they have been found to do where carefully examined north of 1 
Lawrence, and also in the Lake of the Woods district as fully show 
another part of this report. The Huronian rocks are included with 
Laurentian in their flexures, and to a great extent also partake in 
metamorphism, and even appear in some places to have rested at fi 
almost conformably upon them. ‘This eastern barrier resembles m¢ eek 
a rocky plateau, than a mountain region; there is no well-defir red a 
height of land, and the watershed follows a very sinuous direction - 
among the innumerable lakes, small and great, which cover a large po Mat 
part of its surface. Northward from the Lake of the Woods, it 4 
divides the waters flowing into Hudson’s Bay, from those draining | s 









Nelson River, carrying the accumulated waters of the Saskatchewan 
River, the Red River of the North, and innumerable smaller streams, — % 
breaks through the Laurentian barrier at the north end of Lake Winnipeg, cae 
and empties into Hudson’s Bay at York Factory. Through the same = 
gap the Churchill or English River, a not inconsiderable stream, ‘also. 
passes. The geological circumstances which have allowed the drainage 
of the plains to find this easy exit, and the age and character of the vallies 
of the Nelson and Churchill Rivers, are interesting questions still aw , 
solution. a 
3. The Rocky Mountains on the west, rise abruptly from the elevated — 
plain at their base, presenting often to the east almost perpendicular walls _ 
of rock. They are composed, not of a single upheaved ridge, but of a 
number of more or less nearly parallel ranges, which have a general direc- 
tion a little west of north, and a breadth of over sixty miles, extending - 
from the margin of the great plains to the vallies of the Columbia and — 
Kootanie Rivers. In the vicinity of the forty-ninth parallel, the geological | 
continuity of the country is as sharply broken by the line of their eastern t 
base, as its physical character; and we pass suddenly from the little 
altered or disturbed strata of Cretaceous and Tertiary age, to scarped — 
mountain sides of paleozoic rocks, metamorphosed and crumpled in a 
violent manner. Southward, the mountains have not the same abrupt — 
character on their eastern slope ; and to the north, after having culminated 
between the fifty-first and fifty-second parallels, the ranges not only become \ 
more diffuse, but decrease rapidly in height, till on the border of the 
Arctic Ocean they are represented by comparatively low hills. In 
intimate connection with this change in the character of the mountains 
