233 



KED RIVER EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 



these are strongly impregnated with saline ingredients, and 

 are the haunts of innumerable hosts of geese and other 

 aquatic birds. On the south-east flank of the same range, 

 and throughout the plain stretching towards the Assin- 

 niboine, lakes and ponds are everywhere distributed ; the 

 same remark applies to the western flanks of the Eiding 

 Mountain and Duck Mountains, as well as to a large area 

 south of the Assinniboine and east of the Little Souris. 



Lake Winnipeg receives the waters of numerous rivers 

 which, in the aggregate, drain an area of about 400,000 

 square miles. The Saskatchewan (the river that runs 

 swift) is its most important tributary. The South Branch 

 of this magnificent river flows for fully two hundred miles 

 below the Elbow, at the foot of a continuation of the 

 Eyebrow Hill Eange, a low offset of the Grand Coteau, 

 in a north-easterly direction, and its deep excavated valley 

 appears to lie at an average distance of twelve miles 

 from it. This range is cut by several narrow but deep 

 valleys, and from the small lakes or ponds which occupy 

 their summits, water flows during spring freshets to the 

 Saskatchewan and Assinniboine. 



The valley of the Qu'appelle Eiver is a remarkable 

 and important instance of this interlockage, but not the 

 only one which connects two different drainage slopes in 

 this region. Within fifty miles south-west of the Grand 

 Forks, and a short distance south of the Lumpy Hill, 

 there is another deep valley in the dividing ridge, from 

 whose summit lakelets water flows in the spring to the 

 South Branch, a distance of ten or twelve miles, and also 

 to the main Saskatchewan, which it reaches below Pine 

 Island Lake, a distance exceeding 160 miles. One other 

 interlockage between the South Branch and the valley of 

 the Assinniboine will be noticed in the proper place. 



The South Branch, eighteen miles below the Elbow, 



