DISCOVERY BY ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

river. Heno sooner saw us than he gave the whoop to
alarm his friends, who immediately appeared on the bank,
armed with bows and arrows and spears. They were
thinly habited, and displayed the most outrageous antics.
Though they were certainly in a state of great apprehen-
sion, they manifested by their gestures that they were
resolved to attack us if we should venture to land. I there-
fore ordered the men to stop the way of the canoe, and
even to check her drifting with the current, as it would
have been extreme folly to have approached these savages
before their fury had in some degree subsided. My in-
terpreters, who understood their language, informed me
that they threatened us with instant death if we drew nigh
the shore, and then followed their menace by discharging
a volley of arrows, some of which fell short of the canoe
and others passed over it, so that they fortunately did us
no injury. As we had been carried by the current below
the spot where the Indians were, I ordered my people to
paddle to the opposite side of the river, without the least
appearance of confusion, so that they brought me abreast
of them. My interpreters, while we were within hearing,
had done everything in their power to pacify them, but in
vain. We also observed that they had sent off a canoe
with two men down the river, as we concluded, to com-
municate their alarm and procure assistance. . . .”

This circumstance induced him to leave no step untried
in order to establish friendly intercourse with them before
the arrival of the expected reinforcements. So he goes on
to say:

“T left the canoe and walked by myself along the beach,
in order to induce some of the natives to come to me,
which I imagined they might be disposed to do when they
saw me alone without any apparent possibility of receiving
assistance, irom ymy people. .. 79 -At the same tine, in

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