, which
are exposed on the north side of Bear Lake, and similar beds occur to
the southward of the Great Bear Mountain, forming cliffs on the shores
of M'Vicar Bay. At Manito Point, on the west side of the isthmus that
connects Great Bear Mountain to the main shore, a low ridge of limestone
rocks terminates on the borders of the lake, forming some bold cliffs
and a remarkable cave. The stone has a gray colour and bituminous smell,
and contains much interspersed calc-spar. The strata dip to the
north-west.

VICINITY OF FORT FRANKLIN, GREAT BEAR LAKE.

Fort Franklin stands on the northern shore of Keith Bay, about four
miles from Bear Lake River, upon a small terrace, which is elevated
twenty-five or thirty feet above the lake. The bay, contracting towards
the river, is about four miles wide opposite to the fort, and the depth
of water there does not exceed four fathoms. Farther from the river, the
east and west shores of Keith Bay recede to the distance of thirty miles
from each other, and the depth of water in the centre of the channel
greatly increases. The bottom of this bay, wherever it could be
distinguished, was observed to be sandy, and thickly strewed with round
boulders[23] of various primitive rocks of large size, which were
particularly abundant near the river, and with large square blocks of
limestone, most plentiful near the cape formed by the Scented Grass
Hill. In the small bay between the fort and the river, shoals are formed
by accumulations of boulders, and the shores are thickly strewed with
them. [Sidenote: 261 to 308] Many of these travelled blocks consist of
flesh-red granite, having only a small quantity of black mica, exactly
resembling the primitive rocks seen in M'Tavish Bay, but noticed no
where else near the lake. Boulders of the same description occur in
shoals at the mouth of M'Tavish Bay, and on the shores which skirt the
Scented Grass Hill which faces that bay, to all which places they may
have been brought from the parent rock, by a current flowing from the
east. On the northern shore of Bear Lake the great majority of the
boulders consists of limestone. [Sidenote: 266 282] Two varieties of
granite, which occur amongst the boulders, were recognised as being
abundant rocks at Fort Enterprise, which is situated about one hundred
and seventy miles south-east from M'Tavish Bay. Some of the boulders
were of a peculiar-looking porphyry exactly resembling that which occurs
in the height of l