which we had
before us. We were obliged to stop every moment, to take breath, so
stiff was the ascent. Happily it had frozen hard the night before, and
the crust of the snow was sufficient to bear us. After two or three
hours of incredible exertions and fatigues, we arrived at the _plateau_
or summit, and followed the footprints of those who had preceded us.
This mountain is placed between two others a great deal more elevated,
compared with which it is but a hill, and of which, indeed, it is only,
as it were, the valley. Our march soon became fatiguing, on account of
the depth of the snow, which, softened by the rays of the sun, could no
longer bear us as in the morning. We were obliged to follow exactly the
traces of those who had preceded us, and to plunge our legs up to the
knees in the holes they had made, so that it was as if we had put on and
taken off, at every step, a very large pair of boots. At last we arrived
at a good hard bottom, and a clear space, which our guide said was a
little lake frozen over, and here we stopped for the night. This lake,
or rather these lakes (for there are two) are situated in the midst of
the valley or _cup_ of the mountains. On either side were immense
glaciers, or ice-bound rocks, on which the rays of the setting sun
reflected the most beautiful prismatic colors. One of these icy peaks
was like a fortress of rock; it rose perpendicularly some fifteen or
eighteen hundred feet above the level of the lakes, and had the summit
covered with ice. Mr. J. Henry, who first discovered the pass, gave this
extraordinary rock the name of _M'Gillivray's Rock_, in honor of one of
the partners of the N.W. Company. The lakes themselves are not much over
three or four hundred yards in circuit, and not over two hundred yards
apart. Canoe river, which, as we have already seen, flows to the west,
and falls into the Columbia, takes its rise in one of them; while the
other gives birth to one of the branches of the _Athabasca_, which runs
first eastward, then northward, and which, after its junction with the
_Unjighah_, north of the Lake of the Mountains, takes the name of
_Slave_ river, as far the lake of that name, and afterward that of
_M'Kenzie_ river, till it empties into, or is lost in, the Frozen ocean.
Having cut a large pile of wood, and having, by tedious labor for nearly
an hour, got through the ice to the clear water of the lake on which we
were encamped, we supped frugally on pounded maize,