N 0 11 T H WEST OF LAKE S U F E II I O R. 



343 



The general aspect of the country is very much like that on the Grand Portage of 

 St. Louis River. 



The greenstone (No. 416) was the only rock seen from the culmination of the 

 ridge to the valley of the creek. It is the first rock exposed in the bed of Kine- 

 chigakwag, where it is fine-grained, grayish-coloured, and contains occasional crystals 

 of felspar disseminated through some portions of it. It is jointed, and as you 

 recede further from the centre of the ridge, becomes bedded. The beds dip east- 

 northeast, at an angle of 20°. About two hundred and seventy-five yards below 

 where the portage crosses, there is a fall of sixty feet, in a series of cascades. Here 

 the rock becomes finer-grained and slaty (No. 417), some of the beds resembling 

 basalt very much in general appearance. The northeasterly dip still prevails. 



One hundred yards below the falls, a thinly-bedded slaty greenstone (No. 418), 

 comes in. Some of the beds resemble quartz-rock, while others, in consequence of 

 the presence of hornblende in grains, much of which is arranged in parallel lines, 

 have the aspect of a hornblendic gneiss. In the mass, this rock resembles very 

 much the greenstone against which it abuts, where they come together high up the 

 ridge, and also No. 417, which overlies it; but as it recedes further and further 

 from the axis of the ridge, it gradually changes, until it presents the ordinary 

 appearance of a metamorphosed sandstone, approaching very nearly to some of the 

 beds on St. Louis River and Mission Creek, which are entirely unchanged by 

 igneous intrusions. 



Descending two hundred and fifty yards lower down, a metamorphosed siliceous 

 shale (No. 419) is found beneath No. 418. It is very compact, has a conchoidal 

 fracture, and is somewhat gritty to the feel. A few spots of a greenish-coloured 

 mineral, probably epidote, are scattered through it. It resembles the metamor- 

 phosed shales of Hat Point, below Grand Portage Bay, and is intercalated with 

 beds of schistose quartz-rock. Just below this point, the creek is crossed by a 

 dike of No. 419, about thirty feet in width. It is the centre of the first ridge 

 mentioned in ascending from the Lake. It forms an anticlinal axis, and on the 

 lake side, the dip of the bedded rocks is changed to the southeast. No. 418 is the 

 first rock met with in descending the creek below the dike. 



Continuing to descend, No. 421 is found in contact with and resting on No. 418. 

 It is an earthy-looking, siliceous rock, highly charged with chlorite, and contains 

 small segregations of red felspar, which give the prevailing tint to the beds. It is 

 difficult to decide on the exact nature of this rock, but from the best examination I 

 was able to give it, I came to the conclusion that it is a metamorphosed sedimen- 

 tary rock, similar in character to the metamorphosed shales of the regions about 

 Baptism, Manitobimitagico, and Wisacod6 Rivers. The siliceo-argillaceous shales, 

 as well as the shaly sandstones, of this neighbourhood, contain numerous grains of 

 felspar ; and these, under the modifying influence of the numerous trap dikes which 

 intersect the rock in question, were probably segregated, so as to give it a porphy- 

 ritic structure, and more of a felspathic appearance than the rocks about here ordi- 

 narily present. 



For the distance of half a mile below this, the banks of the creek are composed of 

 clay and marl beds, which conceal the rocks. 



