its
ultimate outlet into the Arctic or the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort
Chipewayan on June 3, 1789, accompanied by four French-Canadian
_voyageurs_, two French-Canadian women (wives of two _voyageurs_), a
young German named John Steinbruck, and an Amerindian guide known as
"English Chief". This last was a follower and pupil of the Matonabi
who had guided Hearne to the Coppermine River and the eastern end of
the Great Slave Lake. The party of eight whites packed themselves and
their goods into one birch-bark canoe. English Chief and his two
wives, together with an additional Amerindian guide and a hunter,
travelled in a second and smaller canoe. The expedition, moreover, was
accompanied as far as Slave River by LE ROUX, a celebrated
French-Canadian exploring trader who worked for the X.Y. Company. The
journey down the Slave River was rendered difficult and dangerous by
the rapids. Several times the canoes and their loads had to be lugged
past these falls by an overland portage. Mosquitoes tortured the whole
party almost past bearance. The leaders of the expedition and their
Indian hunter had to be busily engaged (the Indian women also) in
hunting and fishing in order to get food for the support of the party,
who seemed to have had little reserve provisions with them. Pemmican
was made of fish dried in the sun and rubbed to powder. Swans, geese,
cranes, and ducks fell to the guns; an occasional beaver was also
added to the pot. When they reached the Great Slave Lake they found
its islands--notwithstanding their barren appearance--covered with
bushes producing a great variety of palatable fruits--cranberries,
juniper berries, raspberries, partridge berries, gooseberries, and the
"pathogomenan", a fruit like a raspberry.

Slave Lake, however, was still, in mid-June, under the spell of
winter, its surface obstructed with drifting ice. In attempting to
cross the lake the frail birch-bark canoes ran a great risk of being
crushed between the ice floes. However, at length, after halting at
several islands and leaving Le Roux to go to the trading station he
had founded on the shores of Slave Lake, Mackenzie and his two canoes
found their way to the river outlet of Slave Lake, that river which
was henceforth to be called by his name. Great mountains approached
near to the west of their course. They appeared to be sprinkled with
white stones, called by the natives "spirit stones"--indeed over a
great part of North America the Rocky