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

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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.