age depth is 85 feet
only.

Lake Ontario, the Beautiful Lake, is 180 miles long, 45 miles wide, 500
feet average depth, where sounded successfully, but said to be
fathomless in some places, and contains 6,300 square miles. It is 232
feet above the tide of the St. Lawrence.

The Canadian lakes have been computed to contain 1,700 cubic miles of
water, or more than half the fresh water on the globe, covering a space
of about 93,000 square miles. They extend from west to east over nearly
15 degrees and a half of longitude, with a difference of latitude of
about eight and a half degrees, draining a country of not less surface
than 400,000 square miles.

The greatest difference is observable between the waters of all these
lakes, arising from soil, depth, and shores. Ontario is pure and blue,
Erie pure and green, the southern part of Michigan nothing particular.
The northern part of Michigan and all Huron are clear, transparent, and
full of carbonic gas, so that its water sparkles. But the extraordinary
transparency of the waters of all these lakes is very surprising. Those
of Huron transmit the rays of light to a great depth, and consequently,
having no preponderating solid matters in suspension, an equalization of
heat occurs. Dr. Drake ascertained that, at the surface in summer, and
at two hundred feet below it, the temperature of the water was 56 deg..

One of the most curious things on the shallow parts of Huron is to sail
or row over the submarine or sublacune mountains, and to feel giddy from
fancy, for it is like being in a balloon, so pure and tintless is the
water. It is, like Dolland's best telescopes, achromatic.

The lakes are subject in the latter portion of summer to a phenomenon,
which long puzzled the settlers; their surface near the shores of bays
and inlets are covered by a bright yellow dust, which passed until
lately for sulphur, but is now known to be the farina of the pine
forests. The atmosphere is so impregnated with it at these seasons,
that water-barrels, and vessels holding water in the open air, are
covered with a thick scum of bright yellow powder.

A curious oily substance also pervades the waters in autumn, which
agglutinates the sand blown over it by the winds, and floats it about in
patches. I have never been able to discover the cause of this; perhaps,
it is petroleum, or the sand is magnetic iron. Singular currents and
differently coloured streams also appear, as on the ocean; but, as