38 



RED' RIVER EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 



valley of the river lower down. From black argillaceous 

 slates of Huronian (Cambrian) age we pass to a region in 

 which granite, gneiss, and chloritic schist prevail, and 

 where the vegetation is often scanty and poor. 



The course of the river is now almost due north to 

 Little Dog Lake, and its flow is much broken by falls 

 and rapids, which occasion in a distance of nineteen 

 miles, six portages and live discharges. The names, alti- 

 tudes and distances from Fort William of the falls and 

 portages are given in a table at the end of the second 

 volume. 



In the forests which lined the banks at the dilFerent 

 discharges, the canoe birch was frequently seen eighteen 



Second Falls, Kaministiqiiia River. 



inches in diameter ; the underbrush consisted chiefly of 

 hazel nut. Whenever the gneissoid and syenitic rocks 

 prevailed, the valley of the river was much contracted, the 

 timber light, and the soil shallow and full of boulders or 

 detached masses of rock. The volume of water in the 

 river appeared to be very small, considering its unusual 

 height at this season of the year : an approximate mea- 

 surement at one of the rapids gave a breadth of seventy 

 with an average depth of two feet. 



