
GLACIAL PHENOMENA AND SUPERFICIAL DEPOSITS. 223 
510. The drift here closely resembles that of the last locality, differ- 
ing chiefly in the comparative abundance of dark coloured metamorphic 
rocks, which are probably Huronian. Among the fragments of crystal- 
line quartz, were some of quarzite, of which special reckoning was not 
kept. They may, from their appearance, have been either Laurentian or 
Huronian, or even derived from the Rocky Mountains, as afterwards as- 
certained. Some of the hard greenish altered specimens, may also have 
come from the latter source. 
511. Turtle Mountain, so called, will be described more fully in a 
subsequent page, but should also be mentioned in connection with the 
drift deposits. It is a broken, hilly, wooded region, with an area 
of perhaps about twenty miles square, and slopes gradually upward 
from the plain around it, above which it is elevated, at its highest 
points, about 500 feet. It appears to be the culmination westward 
of the hilly drift region previously described, and forms a prominent 
object when viewed across the eastern prairie, from the contrasting 
sombre tint of the foliage of its woods. From the west it can be 
seen from a distance of forty-five miles, and when thus viewed, has 
really much the general outline of a turtle shell. It is bisected by 
the forty-ninth parallel. 
512. Captain Palliser’s expedition followed the Boundary-line thus 
far west before turning northward, and Dr. Hector, from a general 
examination of the mountain, considered it to be composed of drift. I 
have had the opportunity of examining not only the outskirts of this 
region, but of penetrating completely across it in the direction of the 
Line, and my observations tend to confirm those of Dr. Hector. The 
existence of a bed of limestone in the channel of one of the brooks in the 
interior of the mountain, was reported to me, but after having made a 
special trip, occupying three days, for the purpose of visiting the spot, it 
was found to be merely a large boulder of rock, much resembling the 
Lower Silurian limestone of Garry, which had been lodged in an inclined 
position among many others of granite and gneiss, and was breaking up 
under the weather. Nearly all the abrupt slopes and ridges—of which 
there are many—show boulders in abundance, and these appear to be 
chiefly of Laurentian rocks. The shores of some of the numerous lakes 
are largely composed of white limestone with Laurentian fragments, and 
some greyish and greenish Huronian-like rocks. The western is more 
abruptly hilly than the eastern side, and the more prominent ridges have 
a general northerly and southerly direction, with intervening vallies 
