LITTLE WHITE MUD RIVER, 



431 



Creek the country improves very much as to its soil and 

 vegetation, but it abounds in marshes, swamps, and ponds 

 of various sizes, around which grow willows and young 

 aspens, and this character continues for about sixty miles. 



Thence to Fort Pelly the country is densely covered 

 with aspens from five to fifteen feet high, and with 

 willows of different kinds, the trail winding through the 

 Beaver Hills as far as White Sand Eiver. There are 

 open spaces to be seen now and then, where the luxu- 

 riance of the vegetation is remarkable. Lakes and ponds 

 are very numerous throughout, encircled with large aspens 

 and balsam-poplars. 



Several rivers and creeks flow into the Assinniboine 

 from the west, into which many of the marshes and 

 swamps might be easily drained. White Sand Eiver, 

 which is the largest of them, is seventy feet wide, four 

 feet deep, and very rapid. 



The Indians say that White Sand Eiver rises in a small 

 lake in the Touchwood Hills, named " Manitou Lake ;" 

 so called, it is alleged, in consequence of a whirlpool it 

 contains which carries the water of the lake round four 

 times in twenty-four hours. During the winter season 

 this whirling motion is attended with noise and com- 

 motion beneath the ice, which forms first round the edges 

 of the lake, and then slowly narrowing the area of open 

 water, finally closes it, the whirling motion still con- 

 tinuing below the surface. 



Little White Mud Eiver reveals a curious feature in 

 the topography of this region. It rises in Leech Lake, — a 

 marshy sheet of water, — half way between Eound Lake, 

 in the Qu'appelle valley, and Fort Pelly. From the east 

 end of Leech Lake, a tributary of Big Cut Arm Creek 

 runs into the Qu'appelle, and from its west end Little 

 White Mud Eiver rises, which joins the Assinniboine 

 through White Sand Eiver, near Fort Pelly. Near 



