384 ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPEDITION. 



Some exposures of sandstone are visible on the river at 

 intervals lower down, and the drift above them is strati- 

 fied, containing layers of boulders of the same character 

 as the sandstone below, and so regularly placed as to lead, 

 when viewed from a small distance, to the belief that 

 they are part of rock in position. Thirty miles from the 

 Qu'appelle the rock appears on the south-west side, and 

 consists of a white sandstone, with impressions of frag- 

 ments of leaves, and some brown, fibrous lignite. 



A treeless prairie, with a few sand dunes forms the 

 country on either side for a distance of thirty-eight miles, 

 which comprised the extent of our voyage during the 

 day. As evening began to close upon us we came to a 

 camp of Crees just after they had crossed the river. They 

 numbered nineteen tents, and in order to avoid them we 

 drifted several miles further down, and built our fire close 

 to the river at the mouth of a small gully leading from 

 the prairie, 100 feet above us. Mud flats and sandbars 

 continue as before, but the river is not more than a third 

 of a mile broad. 



A narrative of a canoe voyage down a river flowing 

 through a prairie country must necessarily involve nume- 

 rous descriptive repetitions, which will appear perhaps 

 less tedious and more readable in the form in which they 

 were registered at the time in my note book, than if I 

 were to attempt a connected narrative. I shall therefore 

 strictly follow the daily record of what we observed, at 

 the risk of its being nothing more than a dry enumeration 

 of not very interesting facts. 



August 1st. — Morning revealed a fine exposure of rock 

 on the river bank where we camped last night. There is 

 a change in the aspect of some of the strata, they occur 

 massive, in rusty red and greenish-gray sandstone layers, 

 with the concretionary bands as before described. A belt 



