LAKE.

The north shore of Bear Lake is low, and is skirted by many shoals,
formed by boulders of limestone. No rocks, _in situ_, are exposed
between Limestone Point and the Scented Grass Hill, a remarkable
promontory, which separates Smith and Keith bays. Its height above the
lake is betwixt eight and nine hundred feet, and in form and altitude it
corresponds with the Great Bear Mountain, which, lying opposite to it,
separates M'Vicar and Keith bays. I did not ascend either of these
hills; but cliffs, corresponding in character to those of the aluminous
shale-banks at Whitby, flank their bases; and the same formation
probably extends along the north shore of Keith Bay, and some way down
Bear Lake River. The ground skirting the Scented Grass and Great Bear
Mountains is much broken, and consists of small, rounded and steep
eminences, separated by narrow vallies and small lakes. Several shelving
cliffs, about one hundred feet high, and some miles in extent are washed
by Bear Lake. [Sidenote: 251] They consist of slate-clay and shale, more
or less bituminous, and the dip of the strata is in several places to
the N.W. by N. [Sidenotes: 244, 246, 247] At the foot of the Scented
Grass Hill a rivulet has made a section to the depth of one hundred
feet, and here the shaly beds are interstratified with thin layers of
blackish-brown, earthy-looking swinestone, containing selenite and
pyrites. Globular concretions of the same stone, and of a poor clay
iron-stone, also occur in beds in the shale. [Sidenotes: 249, 250, 248]
The surfaces of the slates were covered with an efflorescence of alum
and sulphur. Many crystals of sulphate of iron lie at the bottom of the
cliff, and several layers of plumose alum, half an inch thick, occur in
the strata. At the base of Great Bear Mountain, the bituminous shale is
interstratified with slate-clay, and I found imbedded in the former a
single piece of brown coal, in which the fibrous structure of wood is
apparent. Sections of slate-clay banks, and more rarely of bituminous
shale, occur in several places on the north shore of Keith Bay. In one
place, about seven or eight miles from Bear Lake River, a bed of plastic
and bituminous clay occurs, and in another, near Fort Franklin, there is
a deposit of an earthy coal, which possesses the characters of _black
chalk_.

It is probable that a magnesian limestone underlies this formation of
bituminous shale. I have already mentioned the beds of dolomite