By Canadian Streams

On the second of July he came within sight of the Rocky Mountains, whose glistening summits the Indians called Manetoe aseniah, or spirit-stones, and the following day he camped at the foot of a remarkable hill, constantly referred to in the narratives of Sir John Franklin, Richardson, and other later explorers, as the "Rock by the River Side." There is an admirable drawing of the rock, by Kendall, in the narrative of Franklin's second voyage.

A few days later Mackenzie passed the mouth of Bear River, draining that huge reservoir, Great Bear Lake, whose discovery remained for later explorers to accomplish, and about one hundred and twenty-five miles below he came to the Sans Sault Rapids-the fearful waterfall against which the natives had warned him. As a matter of fact it can be safely navigated at almost any season of the year.

Another thirty miles brought the explorer to the afterward famous Ramparts of the Mackenzie. Here the banks suddenly contract to a width of five hundred yards, and for several miles the travellers passed through a gigantic tunnel, whose walls of limestone rose majestically on either side to a height of from one hundred and twenty-five to two hundred and fifty feet.

At last they reached the delta of the river, and it was well that they were so near their destination, for the Indians were thoroughly demoralised and the voyageurs dispirited, provisions were running perilously low, and the short northern summer was rapidly drawing to its close. On July 12th the party emerged from the river into what seemed to Mackenzie to be a lake, but which was really the mouth of the river. The following day confirmation of this came with the rising tide, which very nearly carried off the men's baggage while they slept. Paddling over to an island, which he named Whale Island, to commemorate an exciting chase after a school of these enormous animals the previous day, Mackenzie erected a post, on which he engraved the latitude of the spot, his own name, the number of persons he had with him in the expedition, and the time spent on the island.

After a fruitless attempt to get in touch with the Eskimo, Mackenzie turned his face to the south, and, after a comparatively uneventful journey, arrived at Fort Chipewyan on September 12th, after a voyage of one hundred and two days. He had explored one of the greatest rivers of America, from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic, and he had added to the known world a territory greater than Europe. Nor was this all, for Mackenzie's journey to the Arctic was but the introduction to his even more difficult, and more momentous, expedition of three years later, over the mountains to the shores of the Pacific. This, however, does not lie within the compass of the present sketch.