Читать книгу Arctic Searching Expedition (Sir John Richardson) - comprehensive & illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition) онлайн
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The Heuchera Richardsonii, which abounds on the rocks of this river, is one of the native medicines, its astringent root being chewed and applied as a vulnerary to wounds and sores. Its Cree name is pichē quaow-utchēpi. The leaves of the Ledum palustre are also chewed and applied to burns, which are said to heal rapidly under its influence. The cake of chewed leaves is left adhering to the sore until it falls off.
In the course of the forenoon we ascended four rapids, occasioning short portages, then the Great Devil's Portage, of fourteen hundred paces; and in the afternoon several other rapids were passed, among which were the Steep Bank, Little Rock, and Trout portages. At the Steep Bank Portage (Portage des Ecores), which is one hundred and sixty paces long, gneiss and mica-slate occur interleaved irregularly with each other, and intersected in every direction by reticulating quartz veins; the prevailing rock in the neighbourhood being gneiss, and the hills low and barren.
June 21st.—Soon after starting we crossed the Thicket Portage (Portage des Haliers) of three hundred and sixty paces, and entered Black-bear Islands Lake, a very irregular piece of water, intersected by long promontories and clusters of islands. After four hours' paddling therein we came to a rapid, considered by the guide as the middle of the lake; in three hours more we came to another strong rapid, and after another three hours to the Broken-Canoe Portage, which is at the upper end of this dilatation of the river. Granite is the prevailing rock in the lake, and one of the small islands consists of large balls of that stone, piled on each other like cannon shot in an arsenal. They might be taken for boulders were they not heaped up in a conical form and all of one kind of stone; and they have obviously received their present form by the softer parts of the rock having crumbled and fallen away. At Thicket Portage and the lower end of the lake, the granite is associated with greenstone slate; and at Broken-Canoe Portage, above the lake, a laminated stone exists, whose vertical layers are about an inch thick, and have a north and south strike, being parallel to the direction of the ridges of the rock. This stone is composed of flesh-coloured quartz, with thin layers of duck-green chlorite, and no felspar. It ought perhaps to be considered as a variety of gneiss.