Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. FROM THB SAULT HOMEWARD. Lake SuPEftiOR is to be figured to the mind as a vast basin with a high rocky rim, scooped out of the plateau extending from the Alle- ghanies to the Mississippi valley, a little to the south of the height of land. Its dimensions, according to Capt. Bayfield, are three hundred and sixty miles in length, one hundred and forty in breadth, and fifteen hundred in circumference. The mountainous rim is almost unbroken; its height varies from the average of about three or four hundred feet, to twelve or thirteen hundred ; the slopes are gradual towards the north, and abrupt on the opposite side, so that on the north shore the cliffs rise steeply from the water, whilst on the south it is said the ascent is more gentle ; the abrupt faces being inland. This difference of formation, joined to the prevalence of northerly winds, has given very different aspects to the two shores ; the southern showing broad sand-beaches and remarkable hills of sand, whereas on the north shore the beaches are of large angular stones, and sand is hardly to be seen except at the mouths of the rivers. The. rivers of the southern shore are often silted up, and almost invariably, it is aid, barred across by sand-spits, so that they run sometimes for miles parallel to the lake, and separated from it only by narrow strips of sand projecting from the west. The continuity of this rim occasions a great similarity among the little rivers on the north and east shores, and no doubt elsewhere. They all come in with rapids and little falls near the lake, and more considerable ones farther back. These streams are said often to have in their short course a descent of five or six hundred feet. This huge basin is filled with clear, icy water, of a greenish cast, the average tem...