256 ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPEDITION. 



portion above ground at least fourteen feet in altitude. 

 The next largest, one of limestone, was seen on the 

 prairies below the Moose Woods ; it is about sixteen feet 

 high, and at least sixty in circumference, is very jagged, 

 and consists of immense slabs, whose edges project two 

 and three feet.* Near it are many others of the same 

 kind, but of smaller dimensions. Near Little Cut Arm 

 Creek, an affluent of the Qu'appelle, large unfossiliferous 

 boulders are very numerous. North of the Assinniboine, 

 near the Big Eidge, boulders are also abundant, and 

 when magnified by refraction look like tents on the level 

 prairies. 



The ice on Lake Winnipeg carries off, every spring, 

 fragments of rock belonging to the Laurentian Series 

 which form its eastern shores. Many of these are dis- 

 tributed over the shallows and on the beaches of the 

 western side of the lake ; these phenomena resemble 

 in miniature the stupendous operations described by 

 travelers as continually occurring on the shores of the 

 Arctic Ocean. 



In Lake Manitobah long lines of boulders are accumu- 

 lating in shallows and forming extensive reefs ; the same 

 operation is going on in all the lakes of this region, and is 

 instrumental in diminishing the area of the lake in one 

 direction, which is probably compensated by a wearing 

 away of the coast in other places. SeVeral of these 

 modern accumulations formed by a re-arrangement of the 

 boulders of the older drift are noticed in preceding chap- 

 ters. Taken as a whole, and in connection with the 

 destruction of the coasts, they afford a striking illustration 



* This erratic was probably one of the series traced by Dr. Hector, from 

 " the Thiekwood Hills, in a southerly direction towards the Moose Hills on 

 the South Branch." — Papers relative to the Exploration of British North 

 America^ 1859. 



