1880. | Geography and Travels. QI 
to their uniting in one delta, the explanation of the so-called Es- 
quimaux lake, which, as Richardson conjectured, has no exist- 
ence, and the delineation of the course of three large rivers which 
fall into the Polar sea in that neighborhood, the “ Anderson” 
discovered by Mr. Macfarlane in 1859, a river named by himself 
the Macfarlane, and another he has called the Ronciére. Sir 
John Richardson was aware of the existence of the second of 
these, and erroneously supposed it to be the “ Toothless Fish” 
river of the Hare Indians (Beg-hui-la on his map). M, Petitot has 
also traced and sketched in several lakes and chains of lakes, 
which supports his opinion that this region is partaking of that 
operation of elevation which extends to Hudson’s bay. He found 
the wild granite basin of one of these lakes dried up and discov- 
ered in it, yawning and terrible, the huge funneled opening by 
which the waters had been drawn into one of the many subterra- 
nean channels which the Indians believe to exist here. 
These geographical discoveries are but a small part of l’ Abbé 
Petitot’s services. His intimate knowledge of the languages of 
the Northern Indians has enabled him to rectify the names given 
by previous travelers, and to interpret those descriptive appella- 
tions of the natives which are often so full of significance. He has 
profoundly studied their ethnology and tribal relations, and he 
has added greatly to our knowledge of the geology of this region. 
It is, however, much «to be regretted that this excellent traveler 
was provided with no instruments except a pocket watch and a 
compass, which latter is a somewhat fallacious guide in a region 
where the declination varies between 35° and 58°. His method 
has been to work in the details brought within his personal 
knowledge or well attested by native information on the basis of 
Franklin’s charts. 
M. Petitot expresses his opinion that the district of Mackenzie 
river can never be colonized—a conclusion no one w 10 has 
visited it will be disposed to dispute; but he omits to point out 
that the mouth of that river is about seven hundred miles nearer 
the post of Victoria, in British Columbia, than the mouth of the 
Lena is to Yokohama, and far more accessible. It needs no 
exceptional climate of the Peace river valley. 
As regards the extent to which the soil is now permanently 
frozen round the North Pole, Sir Henry Lefroy states that Erman, 
on theoretical grounds, affirms that the ground at Yakutsk is 
frozen to a depth of six hundred and thirty feet. At fifty feet be- 
