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

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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.