ne they could see the snow tumbling over an upper
precipice in powdery wind-blown cataracts; a minute later would come
the thunderous {79} rumble of the falling masses. With heroic
fortitude the voyageurs held their way against the fierce current,
sometimes paddling, sometimes towing the canoe along the river-bank.
Once, however, when Mackenzie and Mackay had gone ahead on foot to
reconnoitre, ordering the canoemen to paddle along behind, the canoe
failed to follow. Mackay went back and found the voyageurs disputing
ashore. They pretended that a leak had delayed them. From Indians met
by the way, Mackenzie learned that he was indeed approaching a portage
over the height-of-land to the waters that flowed towards the Pacific.
One of these Indians was induced to go with Mackenzie as guide. They
tramped ahead through a thicket of brush, and came suddenly out on a
blue tarn. This was the source of the Parsnip, the southern branch of
the Peace. The whole party arrived on June 12. A portage of 817 paces
over a rocky ridge brought them to a second mountain lake drained by a
river that flowed towards the west. Mackenzie had crossed the
watershed, the Great Divide, and had reached the waters which empty
into the Pacific.

The river which the explorers now entered was a small tributary of the
Fraser. Some {80} years later it was named by Simon Fraser the Bad
River, and it deserved the name. Mackenzie launched his canoe
down-stream. The men's spirits rose. This was working with the
current, not against it; but the danger of going with an unknown
current became at once apparent. The banks began to skim past, the
waters to rise in oily corrugations; and before the voyageurs realized
it, they were caught by a current they could not stem and were hurried
sidling down-stream. The men sprang out to swim, but the current
prevented them from reaching land, and they clung in terror to the
sides of the canoe till an eddy sent them on a sand-bar in the midst of
the rapids. With great difficulty the craft was rescued and brought
ashore. The stern had been torn out of the canoe, half the powder and
bullets lost, and the entire cargo drenched.

The men were panic-stricken and on the verge of mutiny; but Mackenzie
was undaunted and determined to go forward. He spread the provisions
out to dry and set his crew to work patching up the stern of the broken
canoe with resin and oilcloth and new cedar lining. That night the
mountai