of those on which we have stood, is such as to excite the most exalted and transporting conceptions. [Footnote 1: Mackenzie says seventeen hundred.] The Porcupine mountains may be distinguished, from all that is known of them, as a volcanic group. They are situated in latitude 46° 52'. It would be practicable, in the range of American mountain scenery, to indicate points which have a higher elevation above the sea. Some of the peaks of New England or Virginia lift the observer into the mid heavens. But they are entirely wanting in the effect produced by a transparent mirror of water at their base--for it must be remembered, that no increase of altitude or magnitude can compensate for the absence of water. There is a single precipice, in these mountains, which the Indians represent to be one thousand feet in perpendicular height, having a deep, crater-shaped lake at its base. The peninsula of Kewena extends into lake Superior about forty-five miles from its southern shore--the last ten or fifteen of which exhibit the shape of a lofty comb of the trap formations. Two points of this, which are sometimes called the Mamelles, have been descried, in clear weather, sixty-five miles. From the top of this ridge, the spectator looks to the east, and the west, and the north, and beholds one interminable sheet of crystal water. It seems, from the height, that the action of a single tempest, on so vast a mass of water, would be sufficient to prostrate the whole in ruins. Yet there is a breadth of several miles of solid rock, which has resisted the storms of ages. The effects of the action of the water, are the most striking on its western coast, which has been fretted into bays and inlets, leaving huge, castellated portions of unbroken rock standing in the water. These isolated masses, in misty weather, assume a spectral aspect. The Indians, who find aliment to their superstitions in scenes of awe, formerly deemed this part of the peninsula sacred, and never passed around it in their canoes. The splendid formation of graywacke rocks on Presque Isle river, is worth the whole journey from St. Mary's, to behold. In its spring floods this river is a torrent rushing from a mountain. When drained to the minimum of its summer level, an extensive area of denuded rock is exposed to view, arranged in a stair-like form, and partaking of an air of gloom, from the dark hue of the deeply excavated banks. Iron river has its course through a similar formation, being _east_, as the Presque Isle is _west_, of the Porcupine range. This river has no striking perpendicular falls, but flows down a hackly, rocky bed, in which the water, in its summer phase, stands in pools, or trickles from one triangular tank to another.