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

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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.