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

87 страница из 94

As there is generally some difficulty in making an early start from a fort, we moved in the evening to the point of the bay, that we might be ready to take advantage of the first favourable moment for proceeding on our voyage.

June 26th.—We embarked before 3 a.m., but a strong head-wind blowing, we could proceed only by creeping along-shore under shelter of the projecting points. For some days past the water has been covered with the pollen of the spruce fir, and to-day we observed that it was thickly spread with the downy seeds of a willow. The banks of Deep River, which forms the discharge of Buffalo and Clear Lakes, consist of gravel and sand containing large boulders, principally of trap and primitive rocks. The eminences rise from fifteen to forty feet above the river, and the land-streams have cut ravines into the loose soil, the whole being well covered with the ordinary trees of the country. This low land extends to Primeau Lake on the one side, and Buffalo Lake on the other. The beach, especially towards the openings of Cross and Buffalo Lakes, is strewed with fragments of quartzose sandstone, mixed with some pieces of light red freestone, and many boulders of earthy greenstone, chlorite-slate, porphyritic greenstone slate, and gneiss. Neither mica-slate nor limestone were observed among them, and no rocks in situ. Many of the bays have sandy beaches. The Deep River has little current, except where it issues from the lakes.