The morning of the 18th (Sept.) proved fair, which enabled us to cross the bay, taking the island of Shawangunk in our course, where we stopped an hour, and re-examined its calcedonies and other minerals. We then proceeded across to Oak Point, on its eastern shore, and, coasting down to, and around, the precipitous cliffs of Point aux Barques, encamped in one of its deeply-indented coves, having made, during the day, forty-two miles.
The formation of this noted promontory consists of an ash-colored, not very closely-compacted sandstone, through original crevices in which the waves have scooped out entrances like vast corridors. In one of these, which has a sandy beach at its terminus, we encamped. He who has travelled along the shores of the lakes, and encamped on their borders, having his ears, while on his couch, close to the formation of sand, is early and very exactly apprised of the varying state of the wind. The deep-sounding roar of the waves, like the deep diapason of a hundred organs, plays over a gamut, whose rising or falling scale tells him, immediately, whether he can put his frail canoe before the wind, or must remain prisoner on the sand, in the sheltering nook where night overtakes him. These notes, sounded between two long lines of cavernous rocks, told us, long before daybreak, of a strong head wind that fixed us to the spot for the day. I amused myself by gathering some small species of the unio and the anadonta. Captain Douglass busied himself with astronomical observations. We all sallied out, during the day, over the sandy ridges of modern drift, in which the pinus resinosa had firmly imbedded its roots, and into sphagnous depressions beyond, where we had, in the June previous, found the sarracenia purpurea, which is the cococo mukazin, or oral's moccasin of the Indians. Here we found, as at more westerly points on the lake, the humble juniperus prostrata, and, in more favorable spots, the ribes lacustre.[149]
It was stated to us at Michilimackinac, that Lake Huron had fallen one foot during the last year. It was also added that the decrease in the lake waters had been noticed for many years, and that there were, in fact, periodical depressions and refluxes at periods of seven and fourteen years. A little reflection will, however, render it manifest that, in a region of country so extensive and thinly populated, observations must be vaguely made, and that many circumstances may operate to produce deception with respect to the permanent diminution or rise of water, as the prevalence of winds, the quantity of rain and snow which influences these basins, and the periodical distribution of solar heat. It has already been remarked, while at the mouth of Fox River, that a fluctuation, resembling a tide, has been improperly thought to exist there, and, indeed, similar phenomena appear to influence the Baltic. Philosophers have not been wanting, who have attributed similar appearances to the ocean itself. "It has been asserted," observed Cuvier, "that the sea is subject to a continual diminution of its level, and proofs of this are said to have been observed in some parts of the shores of the Baltic. Whatever may have been the cause of these appearances, we certainly know that nothing of the kind has been observed upon our coast, and, consequently, that there has been no general lowering of the waters of the ocean. The most ancient seaports still have their quays and other erections, at the same height above the level of the sea, as at their first construction. Certain general movements have been supposed in the sea, from east to west, or in other directions; but nowhere has any person been able to ascertain their effects with the least degree of precision."[150]