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Embarking at 3 A.M. on the 22d of July, we descended a narrow channel to the Chest Portage (Portage de Cassette), where our five boats were hauled over a pathway of four hundred and sixty-five paces, and their cargoes carried. A rocky chasm at this place, being one of the numerous channels through which the water flows, incloses a perpendicular cascade upward of twenty feet high; beneath which an isolated column of rock divides the current into two branches, which eddy with great force into the niches and recesses of the stony walls. Huge angular blocks obstruct the water-course, and drift trees, entangled among them, partially denuded of their branches, and wholly of their bark, point in all directions. The overhanging woods almost seclude this gloomy ravine from the sun; and it presents such an aspect of wildness and ruin as rarely occurs even in this country. In one part of the portage road a bed of gneiss is flanked on each side by masses of granite. A labyrinth of passages among granite rocks exists below the portage, many of them entirely choked up with drift timber. In passing rapidly through one of them we grazed a point composed of a crumbling red and gray porphy ritic rock, perhaps an amygdaloid; many cubical and irregularly angular fragments had fallen from it.

At the Island Portage, which immediately followed, the cargo is carried only in the ascent of the river. Our boats descended the fall with their entire load. We next crossed the Raft Portage (Portage d'Embarras), which occupied us three hours. the Little Rock Portage, which follows, the rock is composed of felspar, quartz, and chlorite, being the protogine of Jurine. It differs from the slaty rock observed near the Reindeer Islands, in not being stratified. At the Burnt Portage, the next in order, the rock, which is a porphyritic granite, acquires a polished glistening surface. There is a cascade here of fifteen or twenty feet. The succeeding portage, named the "Mountain," from the steep bank down which the boats are lowered, is shorter than the others, being only one hundred and seventy paces across. The rock at this place is a red, compact, shining or vitreous-looking granitic porphyry, much fissured, and breaking, by the action of the frost, into cubical or rhomboidal blocks, sometimes of great size. The principal fissures are generally, but not always, parallel to each other, and may be traced for seventy or eighty yards without a break, in a transverse direction to that of the eminences and

projecting tongues of the rock. Their course is northeast by north, and southwest by south; and they are, for the most part, four or five feet apart. The minor cracks meet the chief ones at various oblique angles, and sometimes cross them, but not generally. At another denuded point of rock, the wider cracks crossed each other, one set running east-southeast and west-northwest. The recesses left by the blocks which fall away retain their sharpcornered rectangular shape. A layer of hornblende-slate or basalt shows itself at one spot.

The launching-place for the boats here is both steep and rugged; and a brigade seldom passes without some of the boats being broken. One of ours was injured; but, being soon repaired, we left the portage by six in the evening, and encamped for the night at the south end of the Pelican Portage, which is seven hundred paces long.

The power of the sun, this day, in a cloudless sky, was so great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human frame is either greater in these northern latitudes, or the sun, notwithstanding its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the equator; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive within the tropics as I have experienced them to be on some occasions in the high latitudes. The luxury of bathing at such times is not without alloy; for, if you choose the mid-day, you are assailed in the water by the Tabani, who draw blood in an instant with their formidable lancets; and if you select the morning or evening, then clouds of thirsty musquitoes, hovering around, fasten on the first part that emerges. Leeches also infest the still waters, and are prompt in their aggressions.

The Geum strictum grows plentifully on these portages, and is used by the natives for the purpose of increasing the growth of their hair. They dry the flowers in the sun, powder them, and mix them with bear's grease. The Eleagnus argenta, which is also abundant on the banks, is named by the Chepewyans Tap-pah, or gray berry. It is the bear-berry of the Crees, and the stinking willow of the traders; so called, because its bark has a disagreeable smell.

July 15th.-The portage was completed, and breakfast prepared and eaten, in five hours and a half. At the lower end of the path, a sienite rock, composed of crystallized quartz, aurora

PORTAGE O HE DROWNED.

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red felspar, and greenish-black hornblende, yields large cubical blocks of a handsome stone. One of the small boats was overset in lowering it down a narrow channel, and the oars, a coil of rope, and the boat-lockers were swept away by the current. A boat's anchor, and some clothes belonging to two of the crew, were in one of the lockers.

An hour before noon we had crossed the Portage of the Drown ed (Portage des Noyes), where granite is the prevailing rock. This being the last of the portages, three of the small boats brought from England were stowed with pemican for the scavoyage; and Mr. Bell was left to follow with the large boat and the fourth small boat, containing the stores for house-building, nets, ammunition, and other supplies for winter use. He would have accompanied us; but his men had to make oars in place of those which had been lost; an employment which was likely to occupy them for two or three hours.

CHAPTER V.

Pyrogenous Rocks.-Rate of the Current of Slave River.-Salt River and Springs. -Geese.-Great Slave Lake.-Domestic Cattle.-Deadman's Islands.-Horn Mountain.-Hay River.-Alluvial Lignite beds.-Mackenzie's River.-Marcel lus Shale.-Fort Simpson.-River of the Mountains.-Rocky Mountains.Spurs.-Animals.-Affluents of the Mackenzie.-Cheta-ut-tinne.

No primitive rocks were seen on the route down the Mackenzie, on this voyage, after leaving the Portage of the Drowned; but in 1820, when we crossed Great Slave Lake, near the 113th meridian, we traced the western boundary of these rocks, from near the mouth of Slave River, northward by the Rein-deer Islands to the north side of the lake, and continued to travel within their limits up to Point Lake in the 66th parallel. The western edge of the formation was afterward found at the northeast and eastern arms of Great Bear Lake.

The district intervening between the granite at the Portage of the Drowned and the Salt River is flat, with sandy terraces and slopes rising from the river to the height of from twenty to eighty feet, there being in some places two in others three or more such terraces, while in others the river has made a section of the sandy deposit, and formed a high and steep cliff. The valley of the river, deflected to the westward by the rocks of the portages, passes here through the more level (upper ?) silurian strata.

At Gravel Point (Pointe de Gravoir), ten miles from the portages, a bed of concretionary or brecciated limestone protrudes from under a sand-bank forty feet high, and two miles higher up a cliff of cream-colored and brownish limestone stands on the right bank. The country on both sides of the river there appears to be a plain, which has a general level of about fifty feet above the bed of the

stream.

Just before arriving off the mouth of Salt River, we picked up one of the boat's lockers containing the anchor, which had been carried away fifteen miles higher up nearly eight hours before, so that it drifted about two miles an hour, including the time it might have been detained in eddies.

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In 1820, I ascended the very tortuous Salt River, for twenty miles, for the purpose of visiting the salt springs, which give it its name. Seven or eight copious springs issue from the base of a long even ridge, some hundreds of feet high, and, spreading their waters over a clayey plain, deposit much pure common salt in large cubical crystals. The mother water, flowing off in small rivulets into the Salt River, communicates to it a very bitter taste; but before the united streams join the Slave River, the accession of various fresh-water rivulets dilutes the water so much that it remains only slightly brackish. A few slabs of grayish compact gypsum protrude from the side of the ridge above mentioned, and a pure white gypsum is said to be found at Peace Point on Peace River, distant about sixty or seventy miles in a south-southwest direction, whence we may conjecture that this formation extends so far. From the circumstance that the few fossils gathered from the limestone on Slave River are silurian, I venture to conjecture that these springs may belong to the Onondaga salt group of the Helderberg division of the New York system. The Athabasca and Mackenzie River districts are supplied from hence with abundance of good salt. We obtained some bags of this useful article from Beaulieu, who was guide and hunter to Sir John Franklin on his second overland journey, and who has built a house at the mouth of Salt River. This is a well-chosen locality for his residence: his sons procure abundance of deer and bison meat on the salt plains, which these animals frequent in numbers, from their predilection for that mineral; and Slave River yields plenty of good fish at certain seasons. It is the most southern locality to which the Inconnu or Salmo Mackenzii comes, on this side of the Rocky Mountains, as it is unable to ascend the cascades in the Slave River. The Coregoni are the staple fish of the lakes here, as they are elsewhere throughout the country: and there are also pike, burbot, and excellent trout. A limestone cave in the neighborhood, which was too distant for us to visit, supplies Beaulieu with ice all the summer, and he gave us a lump to cool water for drinking, which was extremely grateful. The ammunition and tobacco with which I repaid these civilities were no less acceptable to him. Indeed, I believe that he turns his residence on the boat-route to good account, as few parties pass without giving him a call.

After a short halt, we resumed our voyage until 7 P.M., when