Seeking Pond’s Outlet 25

thoughtful man who acknowledges with innate politeness
the interest of the onlookers. 3

“Bon voyage! Bonne chance!” ‘Vhere was a chorus of
farewells and pleasantries, and much vociferation. As
Mackenzie, the great lord of the North, just twenty-six
years of age, took his place, that send-off in French from
Chipewyan throats, as he was about to make his dash into
the wilds, and down the Columbia perhaps, or even to
Cook’s River on the far Pacific, touched an emotional
chord in his Highland make-up. His partners, and friends
and relatives in the new world, and those he had left behind
a short ten years ago in the distant Hebrides—of them all,
only Roderick, his cousin, knew of this undertaking, on
which he was staking his standing with his partners and
perhaps his life, and that one who shared his secret was
away with the Athabasca brigade en route to Grande Portage.

‘The steersman lifted his pole on high and at the drop, the
paddles flashed in unison and the flotilla, to the sound of
volleys from the muskets on shore, glided swiftly away, ez
route to the silent places of the North. Someone tentatively
started a chanson de voyage, but En roulant ma boule was
laughed aside in favour of Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre,
as being more appropriate to the occasion. |

By noon Fort Chipewyan was disappearing in the rear,
and their faces were definitely set towards the unknown.
Off the mouth of the Athabasca the course was changed
from a westerly to a north-westerly one, and after a run of
thirty-seven miles the tents were pitched on the banks of
the River des Rochers, through which the lake debouches,
after a course of thirty miles, into Slave River. This
connecting channel is a stream 150 yards wide with an easy
current flowing between low alluvial banks which carry a
fine growth of spruce, poplar, birch, tamarack and willow.