Sir John Richardson - Arctic Searching Expedition (Sir John Richardson) - comprehensive & illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition)

Near Cape Choyyè, on the south side of Michipicoten Bay, a small gorge between two points of granite is filled, to the height of twenty-five feet above the water, with rolled stones and pebbles. These rounded stones vary in size from that of a hogshead to a hen's egg, and form a steeply shelving beach, with a flat terraced summit, the larger boulders being next the water, and the smaller pebbles highest up. As the cove is sheltered from high waves, the terrace could not be thrown up by the waters of the lake standing at their present height; nor can it be owing to the pressure of ice, since that would not graduate the pebbles.

At Michipicoten River we had a curious illustration of the agency of frost, on the outlet of the stream. During the summer, when the waters are low, the waves of the lake throw a sandy bar across the mouth of the river. In winter this bar freezes into a solid rock and closes the channel, but as the spring advances the stream acts upon it and cuts a passage. At the time of our visit, on May 7th, the river was in flood, and the bar remained hard, but was cleft by a narrow channel with precipitous sides like sandstone cliffs, and a cascade one foot high existed. This fall, which was five or six feet high when the river broke, would, we were told, entirely disappear in a few days.

The north coast of Michipicoten Bay is the boldest and most rugged of the shores of the lake, and apparently the least capable of cultivation. It rises to the height of about eight hundred feet, and for twenty-five miles comes so precipitously down to the water that there is no safe landing for a boat. On much of the crags the forest was destroyed by fire, many years ago, and with it the soil, presenting a scene of desolation and barrenness not exceeded on the frozen confines of the Arctic Sea. The few dwarf trees that cling to the crevices of the rocks, struggling, as it were, between life and death, add to the dreariness of the prospect rather than relieve it, and wreaths of drift snow lining many of the recesses, at the time when we passed, though it was in the second week of the glorious month of May, gave a most unfavourable impression of the land and its climate. Professor Agassiz has pointed out the sub-arctic character of the vegetation of Lake Superior, by a lengthened comparison with the subalpine tracts of Switzerland; but this is due to the nature of the soil, rather than to the elevation or northern position of the district; for as we advance to the north at an equal elevation above the sea, but more to the westward, so as to enter on silurian or newer deposits in the vicinity of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy River, we find cacti and forests having a more southern aspect.

The ascent to the summit of the water-shed between Lakes Superior and Winipeg, by the Kamenistikwoya River, is made by about forty portages, in which the whole or part of a canoe's lading is carried on the men's shoulders; and a greater number occur in the descent to the Winipeg. The summit of the water-shed is an uneven swampy granitic country, so much intersected in every direction by lakes that the water surface considerably exceeds that of the dry land. Its mean elevation above Lake Superior is about eight hundred feet, and the granite knolls and sand-banks, which vary its surface, do not rise more than one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet beyond that general level, though their altitude above the river valleys which surround them is occasionally greater, giving the district a hilly aspect. The highest of these eminences does not overtop Thunder Mountain and some other basalt-capped promontories on Lake Superior, and had not the silurian strata, which, judging by the patches which remain, once covered the gneiss and granitic rocks nearly to their summits, been removed, the country would have been almost level, and would have formed part of the rolling eastern slope of the continent, above whose plane the highest of the hills on Lake Superior scarcely rises. The summit of this water-shed of the St. Lawrence basin, commencing towards the Labrador coast, runs south 52° west, or about south-west half-west, at the distance of rather more than two hundred miles from the water-course, until it comes opposite to that elbow of the line of the great lakes which Lake Erie forms; it then takes a north 51° west course, or about north-west half-west, towards the north-east end of Lake Winipeg, and onwards from thence in the same direction to Coronation Gulf of the Arctic Sea. The angle at which the two arms of this extensive water-shed (but no where mountain ridge) meet between Lakes Huron and Ontario is within half a point of a right one, and the character of the surface is everywhere the same, bearing, in the ramifications and conjunctions of its narrow valleys filled with water, no distant resemblance to the fiords of the Norway coast. Such a preponderance of fresh water, coupled with the tardy melting of the ice in spring, makes a late summer, and augments the severity of the climate beyond that which is due to the northern position of the district. Though the whole tract is most unfavourable for agriculture, much of the scenery abounds in picturesque beauty. Of this we have an instance in the Thousand Islands Lake, which forms the funnel-shaped outlet of Lake Ontario. At this place the pyrogenous rocks, denuded of newer deposits, cross the river to form a junction with the lofty highlands of the northern counties of New York. The round-backed, wooded hummocks of granite which constitute the more than thousand islets of this expanse of water, are grouped into long vistas, which are alternately disclosed and shut in as we glide smoothly and rapidly among them, in one of the powerful steamers, that carry on the passenger traffic of the lakes. The inferior fertility of this granite belt has deferred the sweeping operations of the settler's axe; the few farm-steadings scattered along the shore enhance the beauty of the forest; and the eye of the traveller finds a pleasant relief in contemplating the scenery, after having dwelt on the monotonous succession of treeless clearances lower down the river. Sooner or later, however, the shores of the Lake of the Thousand Isles will be studded with the summer retreats of the wealthy citizens of the adjacent states, and the incongruities of taste will mar the fair face of nature.

On the summit of the canoe-route between Lakes Superior and Winipeg, a sheet of water, bearing the analogous appellation of Thousand Lakes, is also studded with knolls of granite, forming islets; but low mural precipices are more common there; and there is, moreover, an inter-mixture of accumulations of sand, such as are commonly found on the summit of the water-shed, along its whole range. The general scenery of this lake is similar to that of the Thousand Islands; but though the elevation above the sea does not exceed fourteen hundred feet, the voyagers say that frosts occur on its shores almost every morning throughout the summer.

Silurian strata occur on both flanks of both arms of the water-shed above spoken of, to a greater or smaller extent throughout their whole length. When we descend to Lake Winipeg we come upon epidotic slates, conglomerates, sandstones, and trap rocks, similar to those which occur on the northern acclivity of the Lake Superior basin; and after passing the straits of Lake Winipeg, we have the granite rocks on the east shore, and silurian rocks (chiefly bird's-eye limestone) on the west and north, the basin of the lake being mostly excavated in the limestone. The two formations approach nearest to each other at the straits in question, where the limestone, sandstone, epidotic slates, green quartz-rock, greenstone, gneiss, and granite, occur in the close neighbourhood of each other.

The eastern coast-line of Lake Winipeg is in general swampy, with granite knolls rising through the soil, but not to such a height as to render the scenery hilly. The pine forest skirts the shore at the distance of two or three miles, covering gently-rising lands, and the breadth of continuous lake-surface seems to be in process of diminution, in the following way. A bank of sand is first drifted up, in the line of a chain of rocks which may happen to lie across the mouth of an inlet or deep bay. Carices, balsam-poplars, and willows, speedily take root therein, and the basin which lies behind, cut off from the parent lake, is gradually converted into a marsh by the luxuriant growth of aquatic plants. The sweet gale next appears on its borders, and drift-wood, much of it rotten and comminuted, is thrown up on the exterior bank, together with some roots and stems of larger trees. The first spring storm covers these with sand, and in a few weeks the vigorous vegetation of a short but active summer binds the whole together by a network of the roots of bents and willows. Quantities of drift-sand pass before the high winds into the swamp behind, and, weighing down the flags and willow branches, prepare a fit soil for succeeding crops. During the winter of this climate, all remains fixed as the summer left it; and as the next season is far advanced before the bank thaws, little of it washes back into the water, but, on the contrary, every gale blowing from the lake brings a fresh supply of sand from the shoals which are continually forming along the shore. The floods raised by melting snows cut narrow channels through the frozen beach, by which the ponds behind are drained of their superfluous waters. As the soil gradually acquires depth, the balsam-poplars and aspens overpower the willows, which, however, continue to form a line of demarcation between the lake and the encroaching forest.