an:

"We are off. Fort Smith is next. Fast water. Pilot Boniface
in bow. River very wide below the Mountain Rapids, and
wanders very much--every which way. Shallow so the boats
have trouble. They say no one could run the big water below
Pelican Island off to the right. Crossed the river in a wide
circle. Could hear roar of heavy rapids on both sides.
Boniface says if the water was high we would run the big
rapids on the left straight through, but we cannot do it
now. Our channel is crooked like a double letter S, and I
don't see how he follows it. It takes fancy steering.

"We are following what they call the old Hudson's Bay
channel. This carries us to the right-hand side of the
river, and it looks a mile or two across. Storm came up and
we got wet. Over to the left we could see lights. They said
it was the steamboat _Mackenzie River_ lying at her moorings
at Fort Smith. Jolly glad to get done with this work.

"Dark and wet and late. Went on board steamboat. Quite a
post here. A good many strangers besides the Company people.
Well, here we are at the head of the Mackenzie River, or the
Big Slave, as they call it here. I'm pretty glad."

VIII

ON THE MACKENZIE

The three young companions stood in the bright sunlight on the high
bank of Fort Smith at the foot of which lay the steamer which was to
carry them yet farther on their northwest journey. About them lay the
scattered settlements at the foot of the Grand Traverse between the
Slave and the Mackenzie. Off to the right, along the low bed of the
river, lay the encampment of the natives, waiting for the "trade" of
the season. Upon the other hand were the log houses of the Company
employees, structures not quite so well built, perhaps, as those at
Chippewyan, but adapted to the severity of this northern climate.

At the foot of the high embankment, busy among the unloaded piles of
cargo which had been traversed from the disembarkment point of Smith's
Landing, trotted in steady stream the sinewy laborers, the same
half-breeds who everywhere make the reliance of the fur trade in the
upper latitudes. They were carrying now on board the _Mackenzie
River_, as the steamboat was named, the usual heavy loads of flour,
bacon, side-meat, sugar, trade goods, all the staples of the trade,
not too expensive in their total.

There were to be seen also the human flots