130 Mackenzie’s Voyages

with the canoe, and in preparing poles, Mackenzie left a
message of friendly import for the behoof of passing tribes,
in the shape of a pole, to which he attached a knife with a
steel, flint, beads and other trifling articles, while Cancre
the Crab added a token of his own, a green stick chewed
at one end like a brush used by the Indians to pick marrow out
of bones, and signifying a country abounding in animals.

Low mountains lay off both sides of the river with grassy
foothills nearer at hand, and flats in the angles of the river,
which here varied from a quarter to half a mile in width.
There was still snow on the mountain-tops, and it was to
the rapid thawing of the snow throughout the upper water-
shed that the river owed its rise of one or two feet a day.

Carbon River, thirty miles up, was reached on Sunday
evening and the party camped for the night. The strength
of the river was increasing from day to day so that poling
and tracking were continuous. It was very seldom that
paddles could be used to advantage. The river bottom and
the shores were on the whole favourable for both methods
of progression. :

The explorer refers to his passage of the Parle-Pas Rapids
in these words: “In the afternoon, ‘Tuesday the twenty-
eighth,! we approached some cascades which obliged us to
carry our canoe and its lading for several hundred yards.”
These are the famous rapids which the voyageurs refer to as
‘‘Le rapide qui ne parle pas,’ as when they are approached
from above there is no indication of them in the appearance
of the water, or in any appreciable increase in the sounds of
the river. From below they have a very formidable look.?

1 Mackenzie lost his note-book overboard the day before, and for
the period up to 4 June he had to trust to memory in writing up
his narrative.

4 Signs have been erected above both the Finlay and Parle-Pas
rapids to warn travellers; the latter one is some distance upstream.
Ann. Rep. B.C. Min. Mines, 1923.