We toiled all day without intermission from daybreak till dark. The banks of the river are fringed with a species of coarse marshland grass. Clumps of willows fringe the stream. Rush and reed occupy spots favorable to their growth. The forest exhibits the larch, pine, and tamarack. Moss attaches itself to everything. Water-fowls seem alone to exult in their seclusion. After we had proceeded for an hour above Lake Plantagenet, an Indian in the advance canoe fired at and killed a deer. Although fairly shot, the animal ran several hundred yards. It then fell dead. The man who had killed it brought the carcass to the banks of the river. The dexterity with which he skinned and cut it up, excited admiration. He gave the _moze_, which I understood to mean the hide and feet, to my guide, Ozawindib. Signs of this animal were frequent along the stream. But we were impelled forward by higher objects than hunting. It was, indeed, geographical and scientific facts that we were hunting for. To trace to its source an important river, and to fix the actual point of its origin, furnished the mental stimulus which led us to care but little where we slept or what we ate. When the usual hour for breakfast arrived, the banks of the river proved too marshy to land, and we continued on till a quarter past twelve P. M., before a convenient landing could be made. After this recruit to stomach and spirits, the men again pushed forward, threading the stream as it wound about in a savanna, seldom halting more than a few minutes at a time. Frequently, a shot was fired at the numerous water-fowl, so abundant on these waters. Sometimes a small unio or anadonta was picked up from the shores; occasionally a plant pulled up, for the botanical press. Nowhere was the water found too shallow for our canoes, which were only embarrassed at some points by the density of vegetable tissue. Rain showers were encountered during the whole of the day, the equilibrium of the atmosphere being disturbed by rolling, cumulous clouds, which often poured down their contents with little warning, and without, indeed, driving us from our canoes. For, on these occasions, where a fixed point is to be made, and the showers are not anticipated to be long or heavy, it is better to travel in the rain and submit to the wetting, than to attempt landing. Neither can the meal of dinner be stopped for. At length, at half past five o'clock in the evening, we came to the base of the highlands of the Itasca or Hauteurs de Terre summit. The flanks of this elevation revealed themselves in a high, naked precipice of the drift and boulder stratum, on the immediate margin of the stream which washed against it. Our pilot, Ozawindib, was at the moment in the rear; halting a few moments for him to come up, he said that we were within a few hundred yards of the Naiwa rapids, and that the portage around them commenced at this escarpment. We had seen no rock of any species, in place, thus far.