482 



PHYSICAL ASPECT 0 F T H E 



months of March and April to make sugar. It is said that an industrious family 

 will make from one thousand to fifteen hundred pounds, and that the trees produce 

 from four to ten pounds each. Sugar is with the Chippewa an article of food ; 

 and the sugar-making season is hailed with joy, as putting a period to the starva- 

 tion of winter. White men affirm that the trees would yield much more if the 

 sap was carefully saved and gathered. The rushes furnish food all winter for 

 Canadian and Indian ponies, and for such cattle as have been brought there. Mr. 

 Woods, who has resided four years at the Falls, says his cattle winter well on 

 rushes alone, which they pick out of the snow, sheltering themselves at night in 

 the thick evergreen timber. 



The bar at the mouth of this river is such that vessels cannot enter ; but the 

 mode of improvement adopted on Lakes Erie and Michigan would insure a good 

 harbour. 



About six miles above the Mission, or ten miles from the mouth, in low water, 

 the shoals commence, and occasionally the current is strong. The red clay -banks 

 are first seen about two miles above the Mission, where the river approaches the 

 outside of its immediate valley ; and they vary from forty to one hundred feet in 

 height. 



The " fall" consists of a series of leaps, of one to three feet each, over the tilted 

 edges of red sand-rock. The descent, which is very straight, regular, and beau- 

 tiful, is in all twenty-two feet; affording water for a large amount of machinery. 

 In floods it rises eight to eleven feet below the Falls, but near the mouth the rise 

 diminishes to five, four, and three feet, the waters spreading out through bayous 

 and marsh meadows. 



From Woods's it is necessary to make a portage of two miles, on the west side of 

 the river, around the falls and the rapids above, rising, according to my barometer, 

 forty-five feet. After this, we found no difficulty in ascending, with a birch canoe, 

 by estimate, fourteen miles, to a raft on the next westerly fork, passing on our way 

 the mouth of the East Fork, and the Middle Fork, or main stream. 



The second branch from the west having, as I could learn, no name, I have 

 called it the " Maringouin Fork" in my map, in commemoration of the myriads of 

 musquitoes that inhabit its banks, that being the name the half-breed French give 

 to those pests of the Bad River region. The Maringouin has its sources near 

 Long Lake, on the west, and on the south interlocks with the upper branches of 

 the Chippewa River, among some lakes, enclosed by drift ridges, which are, by 

 barometrical measurement, eight hundred and seventy-one feet above Lake Supe- 

 rior. As there is but little rise from Woods's Falls to the raft, it is easy to perceive 

 that the remainder of this fork must have numerous rapids, chutes, and falls. 



Where the last-named branch leaves Bladder Lake, there is a wild cataract, 

 through a gorge, where the water plunges over one hundred feet in one-fourth of a 

 mile. Also, at the outlet of Lac des Anglais, the chutes commence at the very 

 lake, and as it is about six hundred feet above the Maringouin Fork, and not more 

 than seven miles distant, there must be a succession of chutes till it leaves the 

 mountains. 



About ten miles up, the " East Fork" tumbles down from the mountain range of 



