rty consisted of three
old Copper Indians, with their families who had supported themselves
with the bow and arrow since last autumn, not having visited Fort
Providence for more than a year; and so successful had they been, that
they were enabled to supply us with upwards of seventy pounds of dried
meat, and six moose skins fit for making shoes, which were the more
valuable as we were apprehensive of being barefooted before the journey
could be completed. The evening was sultry, and the musquitoes appeared
in great numbers. The distance made to-day was twenty-five miles.

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 had 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 re-embarking 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. The canoes, after being lightened of part
of their cargoes, ran through this defile without sustaining any injury.
Accurate sketches of this interesting scene were taken by Messrs. Back
and Hood. Soon after passing this rapid, we perceived the hunters
running up the east side of the river, to prevent us from disturbing a
herd of musk oxen, which they had observed grazing on the opposite bank;
we put them across and they succeeded in killing six, upon which we
encamped for the purpose of drying the meat. The country below