, on the east side, stands Clark's Hill, which is
visible from Fort Franklin, and is supposed to be near 1500 feet high.
It is shaped somewhat like the amphibolic-granite mountain of Criffel in
Galloway, and in its immediate neighbourhood there are some less lofty,
but very rugged and precipitous hills, resembling in outline the ridges
of limestone on Bear Lake River. From this place to the commencement of
the lignite formation, already described, the banks of the Mackenzie are
high and clayey.

MACKENZIE RIVER FROM BEAR LAKE RIVER TO THE NARROWS.

Below Bear Lake River the general course of the Mackenzie for eighty
miles is about N.W. by W., when a remarkable rapid is produced by ledges
of stone which cross its channel. The width of the river varies in this
distance from one to three miles, but the water-course is narrowed by
numerous islands, and the current continues strong. The Rocky Mountains
are visible, running in a direction from S.E. to N.W. Judging merely by
the eye, we did not estimate their altitude above four thousand feet,
and I may remark, that the snow disappears from their summits early in
the summer. A back view of the hill at the mouth of Bear Lake River is
also obtained for upwards of twenty miles, but the ridge of which it
forms a part curves inland, probably uniting, as was formerly remarked,
with the one which crosses Bear Lake River near the middle of its
course. The banks of the Mackenzie are in general from one hundred and
twenty to one hundred and fifty feet high in this part, and there are
occasional sections of them, but we had little leisure to examine their
structure. In the voyage of 1826 we drifted down the stream night and
day, landing only when necessary to cook our provisions; and in the
following geological notices, as far as the passage of the river named
the _Narrows_, I have done little more than describe the specimens
collected by Captain Franklin, when he ascended the river by the
tow-line in 1825. The few notes that the rapidity of our voyage
permitted me to make, as to the direction of the strata, &c., were
inserted in the book that was purloined by the Esquimaux at the mouth of
the river.

About fifty miles below Bear Lake River there is an almost precipitous
cliff of bituminous-shale, one hundred and twenty feet high, strongly
resembling the cliffs which occur near the bases of the hill of
Scented-Grass and Great Bear Mountain in Bear Lake already
described[34], and at