LOWER SASKATCHEWAN RIVER VALLEY. 
5 
The banks are very low, seldom rising more than 4 or 5 feet 
above high water. The maximum rise of the river in time of 
flood above low water stage is reported to be only about 3 feet, 
by the Hudson's Bay Company’s agent at Cedar lake. The 
slight effect which floods have on the level of the lower river is 
due to the fact that any excess of water is taken up by the large 
lateral lakes connected with the river. 
It would be possible by lowering, a few feet, the discharge 
channel of Cedar lake in the vicinity of the rapids by which the 
lake waters pass into the lower river to drain a vast area of marsh 
land along the lower part of the river above Cedar lake. When 
unoccupied land becomes sufficiently scarce in the northwest 
the engineering problems involved in such an undertaking will 
no doubt receive careful consideration. 
From Lake Winnipeg the Saskatchewan drainage passes 
through the Nelson river to Hudson bay. 
AREAL DISTRIBUTION OF SILURIAN DOLOMITE. 
In the region of the large Manitoba lakes the Silurian and 
Devonian rocks lie so nearly horizontal that neither strike nor 
dip can ordinarily be determined from individual exposures. 
The combined areal work of several geologists, however, has shown 
that in the territory west of Lake Winnipeg the Palaeozoic rocks 
for 250 miles or more strike 20 to 25 degrees west of north and 
dip to the southwest away from the Laurentian rocks at a few 
feet per mile. This northwesterly strike swings abruptly to the 
west not far from the north end of Lake Winnipeg. This change 
in strike is accompanied by the overlap of Cretaceous beds upon 
the Devonian and Silurian to the north of Red Deer river. 
The westerly and northwesterly strike of the Silurian rocks in 
the Saskatchewan River valley probably differs little from the 
general trend of the river between Pas and Grand Rapids; 
consequently the entire 150 miles of river and lake shore inter- 
vening between the mouth of the river and Pas are within the 
areal limits of the Silurian limestones. Owing to the very deep 
filling by glacial, lake, and river deposits along the Saskatchewan 
valley between Pas and Cedar lake no outcrops of bed-rock ap- 
