THE SUMMIT OF THE RIDING MOUNTAIN. 55 



and remarkably handsome ; the animal might weigh 

 350 lbs., although not yet fat. Leaving three men to 

 cut up and prepare the meat, we commenced the last 

 ascent, and arrived at the summit of the Biding Mountain 

 at three in the afternoon. The last rise was very abrupt 

 it consisted of a steep escarpment of drift clay with 

 boulders, covered with a fine white-spruce, birch, and 

 aspen forest. At the foot of the escarpment were ponds 

 or small lakes, which fed the mountain streams we had 

 crossed. 



The view from the summit was superb, enabling the 

 eye to take in the whole of Dauphin Lake and the inter- 

 vening country, together with part of Winnipego-sis 

 Lake. The outline of the Duck Mountain rose clear and 

 blue in the north-east, and from our point of view the 

 Biding and Duck Mountains appeared continuous, and 

 preserved a uniform, bold, precipitous outline, rising 

 abruptly from a level country lying from 800 to 1,000 

 feet below them. The swamps through which we had 

 passed, were mapped in narrow strips far below ; they 

 showed by their connection with the ridges, and their 

 parallelism to Dauphin Lake, that they had been formed 

 by its retreating waters. The ancient beach before men- 

 tioned as extending far to the north and south, could be 

 traced with a glass by the trees it sustained, until lost in 

 distance ; it foUowed the contour of the lake, whose form 

 was again determined by the escarpment of the Biding 

 Mountain. It required no effort of the imagination to 

 recall the time when the whole of the flat country below 

 us, towards the Laurentides on the east side of Lake 

 Winnipeg, was occupied by the continuation of the Biding 

 and Duck Mountains with their associated ranges to the 

 north, and when the Cretaceous series, superimposed in 

 patches by Tertiary rocks, extended to the basin of Lake 



E 4 



