REPORT BY GEORGE M. DAWSON. 23

To-tuk Lake towards Cluscus was followed. The country passed over is a Country
between

succession of ridges, running more or less regularly in east and west Choo-tan-li and
bearings, separated by hollows with swamps and lakes. Their elevation
varies from 4,200 to’ about 4,500 feet, and their northern slopes are
densely covered with forests of tall straight black spruce, mingled with
balsam spruce (Abies lesiocarpa) resting on a peaty and mossy soil, on
which patches of snow were found lying in the deep shade of the trees
on the seventh of June. The southern slopes are more openly wooded,
but here tangled and almost impenetrable windfalls occur. On this high
country the rock is seldom seen, there being apparently a great thick-
ness of drift. Very ‘large boulders are scattered over the surface in

) many places.

Valley of the Blackwater north of the Cluscus Lakes.—This part of the the Blackwater
Blackwater Valley, like most of its length between this place and the ee
bridge at the Lower Cajion, has much resemblance to that of the
Ku-chen-i-ko above described, but is on a larger scale. The north slope is
generally bare, or but lightly tree-clad, with bunch-grass, wild onions,
bearberry, vetch, strawberry and Galium boreale, while thickets of
willows and dwarf-birch (Betula glandulosa) fringe the stream. Thesouth
bank presents a somewhat similar assemblage of plants, but is much more
thickly timbered, with scrub pine and poplar, and occasional groves of
black spruce. The appearance of the river valley is pleasing, and there
is abandance of good grazing for animals, which the winter snows can
not be deep enough entirely to cover, as the Indians of Cluscus Lake
own a number of horses which are allowed to live as best they can at all
seasons. The sloping sides of the valley are generally steep, but show
little rock, being covered with terraced drift material. At this place, a
very conspicuous bench may be traced, running for miles along the valley .
at an elevation (at Cush-ya, sometimes called Upper Euchinico Lake)
of 296 feet above the river, or 3,476 feet above the sea. The river itself
flows rather rapidly between the long lake-like expansions, which here
characterize it, and add greatly to the beauty of the landscape. Whether
these lakes are held in by rocky barriers or dammed merely by drift

material, I have been unable to satisfy myself.
About one mile above Cush-ya Lake, the whole volume of the river Waterfall.
descends at a leap about fifteen feet over a bed of grey columnar basalt.
The waterfall is symmetrical and curtain-like, with dark amber-coloured
water.
Two miles north of Cush-ya Lake, at an elevation, according to the Kuy-a-KuzLake. |
railway maps, of 500 feet above it, is Kuy-a-kuz Lake, lying nearly east