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

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Our Iroquois, being tired with the day's journey and longing for a fair wind to ease their arms, frequently in the course of the afternoon, scattered a little water from the blades of their paddles as an offering to La Vieille, who presides over the winds. The Canadian voyagers, ever ready to adopt the Indian superstitions, often resort to the same practice, though it is probable that they give only partial credence to it. Formerly the English shipmen, on their way to the White Sea, landed regularly in Lapland to purchase a wind from the witches residing near North Cape; and the rudeness and fears of Frobisher's companions in plucking off the boots or trowsers of a poor old Eskimo woman on the Labrador coast, to see if her feet were cloven, will be remembered by readers of arctic voyages.

Throughout the day's voyage, the primitive formation continued. In several places we observed micaceous slate, traversed by large veins of granite, and alternating with beds of the same, also gneiss in thick beds, with its layers much contorted. Below the Great Rapid there are many bluff granite rocks, and some precipices thirty or forty feet high, the higher knolls rising probably from two to three hundred feet above the water. At the Great Rapid a greenstone-slate stained with iron occurs. At the Barrel Portage, a mile or two further on, where the river makes a sharp bend, beds of chlorite-slate occupy its channel for two miles, having a north-east and south-west strike, and a southerly dip of 60° or 70°. Beds of greenstone-slate are interleaved with it. Above the Island Portage a sienite occurs which contains an imbedded mineral; and at the Rapid River Portage, mica-slate, passing into gneiss, prevails, the beds having a south-west and north-east strike. The granite veins here have a general direction nearly coincident with that of the beds, but they are waved up and down. In the vicinity of the veins the layers of slate are much contorted, following the curvatures of the veins closely. At the lightening-place of the Rapid River, there is a fine precipice of granite fifty feet high, which is traversed obliquely from top to bottom by two magnificent veins of flesh-coloured porphyry-granite. Five miles further on there are precipices of granite one hundred and fifty feet high.