OF THE POLAR SEA. 



75 



crossing a small arm of the lake, arrived at 

 Hill Gates by sunset, having come this day- 

 eleven miles. 



October 1. — Hill Gates is the name im- 

 posed upon a romantic defile, whose rocky 

 walls, rising perpendicularly to the height 

 of sixty or eighty feet, hem in the stream 

 for three quarters of a mile, in many places 

 so narrowly, that there is a want of room to 

 ply the oars. In passing through this 

 chasm we were naturally led to contemplate 

 the mighty but, probably, slow and gradual 

 effects of the water in wearing down such 

 immense masses of rock ; but in the midst 

 of our speculations, the attention was ex- 

 cited anew to a grand and picturesque 

 rapid, which, surrounded by the most wild 

 and majestic scenery, terminated the defile. 

 The brown fishing-eagle had built its nest 

 on one of the projecting cliffs. In the 

 course of the day we surmounted this and 

 another dangerous portage, called the Upper 

 and Lower Hill Gate Portages, crossed a 

 small sheet of water, termed the White Fall 

 Lake, and entering the river of the same 



