particular, attracted attention by its white stem, light green spray, and pendent, golden catkins. Willows of a darker foliage lined the river bank; and the background was covered with dark green pines, intermixed with patches of lively aspen, and here and there a tapering larch, gay with its minute tufts of crimson flowers, and young pale green leaves. The balsam poplar, with a silvery foliage though an ungainly stem, and the dank elder, disputed the strand at intervals with the willows; among which the purple twigs of the dog-wood contributed effectively to add variety and harmony to the colours of spring.

The

The Actoa alba grows abundantly here; it is called by the Canadians le racine d'ours, and by the Crees, musqua-mitsu-in (bears' food). A decoction of its roots and of the tops of the spruce fir is used as a drink in stomachic complaints. Acorus calamus is another of the indigenous plants that enter into the native pharmacopeia, and is used as a remedy in colic. About the size of a small pea of the root, dried before the fire or in

the sun, is a dose for an adult, and the pain is said to be removed soon after it is masticated and swallowed. When administered to children, the root is rasped, and the filings swallowed in a glass of water, or of weak tea with sugar. A drop of the juice of the recent root is dropped into in

flamed eyes, and the remedy is said to be an effectual though a painful one. I have never seen it tried. The Cree name of this plant is watchuskè mitsu-in, or "that which the musk-rat eats."

At breakfast-time we crossed the Carp Portage, where there is a shelving cascade over granite rocks. The grey sucking carp (Catastomus hudsonius) was busy spawning in the eddies, and our voyagers killed several with poles. Two miles above the portage there are some steeply rounded sandy knolls clothed with spruce trees, being the second or high bank of the river, which is elevated above all floods of the present epoch. In some places granite rocks show through sand, heaped round their base. The frequent occurrence of accumulations of sand in this granite and gneiss district, near the water-sheds of contiguous river systems, has been already noticed. In the course of the forenoon we passed the Birch lighteningplace (Demi-charge du bouleau), where a slaty sienite or greenstone occurs, the beds being inclined to the east-north-east at an angle of 45°; and an hour afterwards we crossed the Birch Portage, five hundred and forty paces long. The rocks there are porphyritic granite, portions of which are in thin beds, and are therefore to be entitled gneiss.

The river has the character peculiar to the district,

that is, it is formed of branching lake-like expansions without perceptible current, connected by falls or rapids occasioning portages, or by narrow straits through which there flows a strong stream. At four in the afternoon we crossed the Island Portage, where the rock is a fine-grained laminated granite or gneiss, containing nodules or crystals of quartz, which do not decay so fast as the rest of the stone, and consequently project from its surface: the layers are contorted. In 1825, which was a season of flood, this islet was under water, and our canoes ascended among the bushes.

Two hours later we passed the Pine Portage (Portage des Epinettes), and entered Half-Moon Lake (Lac Mi-rond*). At this portage the rocks are granite, greenstone, and black basalt, or hornblende-rock, containing a few scales of mica, and a very few garnets. The length of the portage is two hundred yards. At our encampment on a small island in Half-Moon Lake the gneiss lay in vertical layers, having a north and south strike. A few garnets were scattered through the stone. This piece of water, and Pelican and Woody Lakes, which adjoin it, are full of fish, and they are consequently haunted by large bodies of pelicans, and several pairs of white-headed eagles (Haliaëtus

* Called by mistake Lac Heron in Franklin's overland journeys.

albicilla). This fishing eagle abounds in the watery districts of Rupert's Land; and a nest may be looked for within every twenty or thirty miles. Each pair of birds seems to appropriate a certain range of country on which they suffer no intruders of their own species to encroach; but the nest of the osprey is often placed at no great distance from that of the eagle, which has no disinclination to avail itself of the greater activity of the smaller bird, though of itself it is by no means a bad fisher. The eagle may be known from afar, as it sits in a peculiarly erect position, motionless, on the dead top of a lofty fir, overhanging some rapid abounding in fish. Not unfrequently a raven looks quietly on from a neighbouring tree, hoping that some crumb may escape from the claws of the tyrant of the waters. Some of our voyagers had the curiosity to visit an eagle's nest, which was built, on the cleft summit of a balsam poplar, of sticks, many of them as thick as a man's wrist. It contained two young birds, well fledged, with a good store of fish, in a very odoriferous condition. While the men were climbing the tree the female parent hovered close round, and threatened an attack on the invaders; but the male, who is of much smaller size, kept aloof, making circles high in the air. The heads and tails of both were white. The pelican, as it assembles in flocks, and is

very voracious, destroys still larger quantities of fish than the eagle. It is the Pelicanus trachyrhynchus of systematic ornithologists, and ranges as far north as Great Slave Lake, in latitude 60°— 61° N. These birds generally choose a rapid for the scene of their exploits, and, commencing at the upper end, suffer themselves to float down with the current, fishing as they go with great success, particularly in the eddies. When satiated, and with full pouches, they stand on a rock or boulder which rises out of the water, and air themselves, keeping their half-bent wings raised from their sides, after the manner of vultures and other gross feeders. Their pouches are frequently so crammed with fish that they cannot rise into the air until they have relieved themselves from the load, and on the unexpected approach of a canoe, they stoop down, and, drawing the bill between their legs, turn out the fish. They seem to be unable to accomplish this feat when swimming, so that then they are easily overtaken, and may be caught alive, or killed with the blow of a paddle. If they are near the beach when danger threatens, they will land to get rid of the fish more quickly. They fly heavily, and generally low, in small flocks of from eight to twenty individuals, marshalled, not in the cuneiform order of wild geese, but in a line abreast, or slightly en echellon; and their snow-white plum