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

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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.