of a lofty cliff of limestone, which forms part of a ridge that is
continued through the country on both sides of the river.

Viewed from the summit of this ridge, which rises about eight hundred
feet above the river, the country towards Bear Lake appears level. The
view down the river presents also a plain country, bounded on the
Mackenzie by another limestone ridge, which, unless the eye was deceived
by the distance, gradually inclined to the one at the rapid, and
appeared, by joining it to the northward, to form a great basin. These
ridges are also prolonged to the southward. The plain is covered with
wood, intersected by chains of lakes, and seemed to lie rather below the
summit level of the banks of Bear Lake River. It is only comparatively,
that the country deserves the name of plain, for its surface is much
varied by depressions, ravines, and small eminences, that do not,
however, destroy the general level appearance when seen from a distance.
The view from the hill is terminated, to the westward, by the distant
chain of the Rocky Mountains, running nearly N.W. by N. A little below
the rapid, a small stream from the southward flows into the Bear Lake
River, near whose sources the Indians procure an excellent common salt,
which is deposited from the springs by spontaneous evaporation.

The walls of the rapid are about three miles long, and 120 feet high.
[Sidenote: 25] They are composed of horizontal beds, the lower of which
consist of an earthy-looking stone, intermediate between slate-clay and
sandstone, having interiorly a dull yellowish-gray colour. Concretions,
with smooth surfaces, about the thickness of a swan's quill, pass
perpendicularly through the beds like pins, are prolonged beyond the
partings, and bear some resemblance to portions of the roots or branches
of a tree. The seam surfaces are very uneven. [Sidenote: 18] These beds
are parted by thin, slaty layers, of a stone similar in appearance, but
rather harder, and containing many interspersed scales of mica, and also
some minute portions of carbonaceous matter in the form of lignite.
[Sidenotes: 19, 1827] The thin layers contain impressions of ferns, and
from the debris at the bottom of the cliff I gathered impressions of the
bark of a tree (lepidodendron) and some ammonites in a brown iron-shot
sandstone.[25] [Sidenote: 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28] The upper
beds are composed of a fine grained, quartzose, gray sandstone, having
an earthy