On the following morning we went down to these Indians and delivered to
them notes on the North-West
Company for the meat and skins they had
furnished, and we had then the mortification of learning that, not having
people to carry a considerable quantity of pounded meat which they
intended for us, they had left it upon the Bear Lake Portage. They
promised however to get it conveyed to the banks of this river before we
could return and we rewarded them with a present of knives and files.
After reembarking we continued to descend the river which was now
contracted between lofty banks to about one hundred and twenty yards
wide; the current was very strong. At eleven we came to a rapid which had
been the theme of discourse with the Indians for many days, and which
they had described to us as impassable in canoes. The river here descends
for three-quarters of a mile in a deep but narrow and crooked channel
which it has cut through the foot of a hill of five hundred or six
hundred feet high. It is confined between perpendicular cliffs resembling
stone walls, varying in height from eighty to one hundred and fifty feet,
on which lies a mass of fine sand. The body of the river pent within this
narrow chasm dashed furiously round the projecting rocky columns and
discharged itself at the northern extremity in a sheet of foam.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 447 of 649
Words from 120626 to 120875
of 176017
