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

At the outlet of Beaver Lake, and at several succeeding points on both sides of the canoe-route, the thin slaty limestone forms cliffs, thirty or forty feet high; but about the middle of the lake, there is a small island of greenstone. Beyond this we again touched upon the granite rocks which we had left at the north-east corner of Lake Winipeg, bearing from this place about east 82° south.

At the entrance of Ridge River we met Mr. M'Kenzie, Jun., in charge of a brigade of boats, carrying out the furs of the Isle à la Crosse district, and were glad to obtain from him tidings of Mr. Bell, who was advancing prosperously, though he had been stopped for three days by ice, on the lake which we had just crossed. The Missinipi, or Churchill River, Mr. M'Kenzie told us, did not open till the 6th of the present month, though in common years it seldom continues frozen beyond the 1st.

Soon after parting with this gentleman, we met the schoolmaster of Lac La Ronge district, who, with his wife and four children, were on their way to pass the summer with the Rev. Mr. Hunter, episcopal clergyman at the Pas. Both husband and wife are half-breeds, and both are lively, active, and intelligent. The family party were travelling in a small canoe, which the husband paddled on the water, and carried over the portages with their light luggage. For their subsistence, they depended on such fish and wild-fowl as they could kill on the route; and the lady was very grateful for a small supply of tea, sugar, and flour which we gave her. The young ones bore the assaults of the moschetoes with a stoical indifference, as an inevitable evil, that had belonged to every summer of their lives, and from which no part of the world, as far as they knew, was exempt. At the Ridge Portage, where we encamped for the night, the rock is gneiss, resembling mica-slate, owing to the quantity of mica that enters into its composition.

On the 17th, we came early to a long and strong rapid, bearing the same appellation with the preceding portage, and which is said to be the highest point to which sturgeon ascend in this river; and it is most probably the northern limit of the range of that fish, on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. It is situated in about 54½° degrees of north latitude. We noticed two species of this fish in the Saskatchewan River system. One of these is described in the Fauna Boreali-Americana under the name of Accipenser rupertianus, and has a tapering acute snout. It seldom exceeds ten or fifteen pounds in weight. The other is the Namèyu of the Crees, and has not been hitherto described. It very commonly weighs ninety pounds, and attains the weight of one hundred and thirty. Its snout is short and blunt, being only one third of the length of the entire head; its nasal barbels are short, its shields small and remote, and the ventral rows are absent. Its caudal is less oblique than that of the smaller kind, the upper lobe being proportionally shorter. This species ascends the Winipeg River as high as the outlet of Rainy Lake: and the smaller kind is occasionally, though rarely, taken also in that locality, but, in general, it seems to be unable to surmount the cascade at the outlet of the Lake of the Woods. The rocks here are granite, and a mountain-green chlorite slate, similar to that which occurs so abundantly on the north side of the Lake Superior basin; the latter, under the action of the weather, forms a tenacious clayey soil. A hornblende-slate occupies the bed of the river, and rises, on each bank, into rounded knolls and low cliffs. The inequalities of the country here, as well as its vegetation, are very similar to that on the Kamenistikwoya, where the same formation exists.

The woods, being now in full but still tender foliage, were beautiful. The graceful birch, in 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 Actæa 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. The Acorus calamus is another of the indigenous plants that enter into the native pharmacopœia, 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 inflamed 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 watchŭskè 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 lightening-place (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 (Haliæëtus 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.