Great Lakes form a single, naturally interconnected body of fresh water, within the Great Lakes Basin. They form a chain connecting the east-central interior of North America to the Atlantic Ocean. From the interior to the outlet at the Saint Lawrence River, water flows from Superior to Huron and Michigan, southward to Erie, and finally northward to Lake Ontario. The lakes drain a large watershed via many rivers, and are studded with approximately 35,000 islands. There are also several thousand smaller lakes, often called "inland lakes," within the basin. The surface area of the five primary lakes combined is roughly equal to
Border Lakes Ojibwe dialect Border Lakes Ojibwe dialect Border Lakes Ojibwe is a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in the Lake of the Woods area of Ontario at the intersection of the borders of Ontario, Minnesota, and Manitoba. Communities in the Border Lakes dialect area have sometimes been treated as a part of the Western Ojibwe (Saulteaux) dialect, but dialect survey research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s analyses it as a separate dialect closely related to Saulteaux Ojibwe. Communities identified as Border Lakes include Lac La Croix, Emo (Rainy River First Nation), and Whitefish Bay, all in Ontario. Border Lakes Ojibwe is