N 0 ETHERN MINNESOT A. 



185 



The waters of this lake are remarkably cold — below 40° of Fahrenheit's ther- 

 mometer. Its chilling effects on the superincumbent atmosphere, condenses its 

 moisture into fine spray, which, floating in the rays of a setting sun, as Ave 

 viewed it in the evening, presented the most brilliant rainbows, such as are fre- 

 quently to be observed throwing their prismatic arches over the precipice of some 

 foaming cascade. 



During the night of the 4th of August, when we encamped on the spot from 

 which the drawing was taken, water was frozen in a tin cup, and the ground was 

 covered with frost in the morning. 



Our pilot, an old, experienced voyageur, who had made the trip from the Assini- 

 boin Settlement to Lake Superior some ten or a dozen times, stated that he had 

 never passed this place, even in midsummer, without experiencing frost. 



From Cold- Water Lake to Lake Superior, the descent is much shorter and more 

 abrupt than on the northwest, towards Lake Winnipeg. 



After making the last portage but one, on the route to Thunder Bay, on Lake 

 Superior, the sudden passage from the metamorphic schists to the slates and con- 

 glomerates of Lake Superior, is marked by precipitous falls, well illustrated by the 

 frontispiece. The Falls of Kakkabika, almost a counterpart of those on Pigeon 

 River, indicate a corresponding change along the face of the southern bearing of 

 the northern extension of this ancient system of crystalline schists on the Kaminis- 

 tiquia ; indeed, this geological transition is uniformly accompanied bv analogous 



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