Power for Driving Mills
or machinery of any kind, while a supply of timber for building and fuel could be obtained from the surrounding country, and the soil would grow any of the ordinary roots or more hardy cereals, so that it is not improbable that before long when this fertile country is made accessible by the advent of a railroad from the south, one of the most prosperous towns in the district may grow up on the shore of this now secluded lake.
“Footprint lake, on the northern shore of which the Hudson’s Bay Company have had a trading post for a number of years, and the Methodists have a small church and mission house, has somewhat the shape of a rude cross, seven miles long from east to west, and six miles from north to south. The latitude of the trading post was found to be 55° 48′ 26′′ north. The lake is surrounded by banks of light grey friable clay from thirty to forty feet high, through which rise rounded hills of gneiss up to two hundred feet or more in height. The clay extends over the lower portions of these hills, but some of the higher summits appear to rise above it, possibly having risen above the surface of Lake Agassiz where the surrounding clay was deposited on its floor. When the lake was visited in August last both the trader and the missionary had excellent gardens in which they were successfully growing potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, onions, radishes, lettuce, peas, beans, turnips, carrots and other vegetables, and many of the Indians had patches of potatoes sufficiently large to assist materially in the support of their families throughout the winter.
“I enquired from the Indians who were living around the lake, how far the fertile clay-covered country extended towards the north, and they told me that it extended as far as Indian lake on Churchill river, north of which the surface is either of sand or rock.”
Mr. Tyrrell reports that many of the smaller fruits grow on the clay-covered country explored in great profusion. Among those that he reports as especially abundant were raspberries, gooseberries, red and black currants, strawberries, blueberries and headberries (Rubus Chameomorus).
Strawberries were growing “in great profusion” in the tract about Muhigan rapids on Muhigan river.
The country above Wuskwatim lake, according to Mr. Tyrrell, “seems to be a great clay plain, cut through by the sloping trough of the river, and trenched by wide lateral gulleys. The surface is generally covered with small poplar, with some spruce in the valleys, and there are no signs of rocky hills, or of rock, except here and there at the water’s edge.”
Mr. Tyrrell reports that McLaughlin river, throughout its whole course from the long narrow lake to its mouth, flows through a level, clay-covered country, the rock merely rising here and there in knolls and ridges above the general level.
Mr. Tyrrell, reporting (Summary Rep. Geol. Survey, 1890-91) on his survey of the district about Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis, mentions a cliff at Limestone bay, in the extreme northwest of Lake Winnipeg, rising in some places to a height of forty feet, composed at the bottom of a stiff, blue alluvial clay, and at the top of a mossy peat, and further on in the report proceeds to say:—“A deposit of clay similar to that on Mossy point extends all along the east shore of Lake Winnipeg, and the waves washing against the soft cliffs become charged with the mud from which the lake derives its name. This clay is also of great economic interest, for instead of the east shore of the lake being an uninhabitable rocky wilderness, as is generally supposed, it is largely covered with
A Rich Blue Alluvial Soil,