s name. From now on, progress became easier. At this
latitude and season the northern day gave the voyageurs twenty hours of
sunlight in each day, {79} and with smooth water and a favouring
current the descent was rapid. Five days after leaving the Great Slave
Lake the canoes reached the region where the waters of the Great Bear
Lake, then still unknown, drain into the Mackenzie. The Indians of
this district seemed entirely different from those known at the trading
posts. At the sight of the canoes and the equipment of the voyageurs
they made off and hid among the rocks and trees beside the river.
Mackenzie's Indians contrived to make themselves understood, by calling
out to them in the Chipewyan language, but the strange Indians showed
the greatest reluctance and apprehension, and only with difficulty
allowed Mackenzie's people to come among them. Mackenzie notes the
peculiar fact that they seemed unacquainted with tobacco, and that even
fire-water was accepted by them rather from fear of offending than from
any inclination. Knives, hatchets and tools, however, they took with
great eagerness. On learning of Mackenzie's design to go on towards
the north they endeavoured with every possible expression of horror to
induce him to turn back. The sea, they said, was so far away that
winter after winter must pass before Mackenzie could hope to reach it:
he would be an old man {80} before he could complete the voyage. More
than this, the river, so they averred, fell over great cataracts which
no one could pass; he would find no animals and no food for his men.
The whole country was haunted by monsters. Mackenzie was not to be
deterred by such childish and obviously interested terrors. His
interpreters explained that he had no fear of the horrors that they
depicted, and, by a heavy bribe, consisting of a kettle, an axe, and a
knife, he succeeded in enlisting the services of one of the Indians as
a guide. That the terror of the Far North professed by these Indians,
or at any rate the terror of going there in strange company, was not
wholly imaginary was made plain from the conduct of the guide. When
the time came to depart he showed every sign of anxiety and fear: he
sought in vain to induce his friends to take his place: finding that he
must go, he reluctantly bade farewell to his wife and children, cutting
off a lock of his hair and dividing it into three parts, which he
fastened to the hair of each of them.

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