140 



RED RIVER EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 



After making its north-west turn, the Assinniboine is 

 so remarkably crooked that a straight line drawn through 

 the tract of country in which it meanders for a distance 

 of twelve miles, would be cut eighteen times by the river, 

 and these windings are confined within such a limited 

 breadth that in a strip of the same length, and 1,000 yards 

 broad, the curves of the river would just overlap this 

 boundary four times. 



The physical features of the Assinniboine as far as 

 Prairie Portage, resemble in every important particu- 

 lar those of Eed Eiver. The tortuous sinuosities of the 

 larger stream are reproduced with curious fidelity in the 

 magnificent prairies through which its western rival 

 flows. 



There is little or no variety in the character of the 

 banks either of Ked Eiver or the Assinniboine ; they con- 

 sist of Post Tertiary stratified clays and marls, overlaid by 

 vegetable mould. At Lane's Post, twenty-two miles west of 

 Fort Garry, a fresh exposure of the bank, which, by the 

 way, is continually breaking down in small patches and 

 changing, during the lapse of many years, the channel of the 

 river, exhibited stratified whitish marly clay, and dark drab 

 coloured clay from the water's edge to within five feet of 

 the prairie level, which here, as is frequently the case, 

 comes abruptly upon the river. Dark alluvial clay suc- 

 ceeds, having an average thickness of about four feet ; 

 this is followed by from six to eighteen inches of black 

 prairie mould. 



Beyond Lane's Post the river course is westerly for a 

 few miles, it then makes a bend towards the north-west, 

 until Long Lake, an old bed of the river, is reached, after 

 which it turns towards the south-west for about sixteen 

 miles, thence westerly, ten miles further to Prairie Portage. 

 Nine miles beyond Lane's Post the settlements cease ; they 



