e_, and the river afterwards contracts to less than
a mile in breadth; forming in one place, when the water is low, a strong
rapid. A second dilatation, about twenty-five miles below the first, is
termed the _second little lake_. The shores throughout this distance are
generally flat and covered with boulders of limestone, compact felspar,
granite, gneiss, and sienite, and there are many of these stones
imbedded in a tenacious clay, which forms the beach. A ridge, having an
even outline, and apparently of small elevation, commences behind Stony
Point, in Slave Lake, some distance inland, and, running nearly parallel
to the river, disappears about Fishing River, a stream which joins the
Mackenzie, below the Second Little Lake. The Horn Mountains, a ridge of
hills, of considerably greater elevation, and having a more varied
outline than that on the south shore, are first visible on the north
side of the Second Little Lake, and continue in sight nearly as far as
the junction of the "River of the Mountains," or "Forks, of the
Mackenzie," as the traders term the union of the two rivers. [Sidenote:
120, 121] The only rocks seen _in situ_ between Slave Lake and the
Forks, were a bituminous shale of a brownish-black colour, in thin
slates, and a slate-clay of a pure yellowish-gray colour, which, as well
as the bituminous shale, forms steep banks.

ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

About twenty-five or thirty miles below the forks, the first view is
obtained of the Rocky Mountains, which there appear to consist of
short-conical peaks, scarcely rising two thousand feet above the river.
Some distance lower down, the river, changing its course from W.N.W. to
N.N.E., turns sharply round the mountains, which are there disposed in
ridges, having bases from one to two miles wide, and a direction of
S.S.W. or S.W. by S. being nearly at right angles to the general course
of the great range to which they belong. The eastern sides of the ridges
present a succession of wall-sided precipices, having beneath them
shelving acclivities formed by debris, and exhibiting on their faces
regular lines of stratification. The western sides of the ridges are of
more easy ascent. The vallies which separate these ridges and open
successively to the river, are narrow, with pretty level bottoms, but
very steep sides well clothed with trees. In the first ridge, the strata
seemed to dip to the northward at an angle of 35 degrees. In some of the
others they were horizonta