22 Str ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

fur-traders, of which he has left a detailed
description; he was already familiar with it
for fifteen hundred miles to Ile 4 La Crosse.
It ran by an intricate course, involving about
forty portages, from Grand Portage to the
Lake of the Woods, and down the turbulent
Winnipeg River to Lake Winnipeg. Some-
where on this part of the journey Mackenzie’s
own canoe came to grief, leaving him ‘‘desti-
tute of all necessaries and equipments for
inland,” and delaying him considerably. He
pushed on up the broad waters of Lake Win-
nipeg to the mouth of the Saskatchewan
River, up the Saskatchewan to Cumberland
House, the oldest post of the Hudson’s Bay
Company in the interior, and by another maze
of waterways over the height of land to the
Churchill River and his district of the last
two seasons. Thence the way ran up the
Churchill to Ile 4 La Crosse, and from Ile 4
La Crosse northwesterly to Lake La Loche,
the source of the Churchill.

Near La Loche began the longest and
most famous of all the regular portages in the
North-West; to reach Athabaska the height