CHAPTER V
TRACKING UP-STREAM A THOUSAND MILES

Durine the night of Monday, July the thirteenth, forty days
since their departure from Chipewyan, the tide rose in their
Arctic camp, and their baggage had to be moved. In the
morning the weather was fine and calm. The nets yielded
seven poissons inconnus which were unpalatable, a whitefish
that proved delicious, and another about the size of a herring,
which none of the party had ever seen before except English
Chief who recognised it as a kind that was plentiful in
Hudson Bay.

The stores had been reduced to five hundred pounds,
“which without any further supply, would not have sufficed
for fifteen people above twelve days.” Therefore the nets
were used at every opportunity to supplement their rations.

Mackenzie for once allows himself the luxury of sleeping
longer than usual, but his conscience constrains him to say
in extenuation that he had sat up till three in the morning.
His modesty frequently robs his narrative of the personal
element, and there is, in consequence, an occasional flatness
in the story. It is not always possible to know what he
thought on those occasions when it is important that we
should know. What precisely did he think at this juncture
regarding his venture? Was he satisfied that he had reached
salt water? It has been observed that he, who had passed his
boyhood on the sea-girt Hebrides, nowhere intimates that
he took the obvious course of tasting the water. On the other
hand, to his matter-of-fact mind it may not have appeared

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