Tracking Up-Stream —— 81

dye, it being the mineral with which the natives render their
quills black.” }

Low water, cold nights, the disappearance of mosquitoes,
and the lengthening of the beaver’s fur were all signs which
impressed upon these men of the north the necessity of
hastening. ‘‘’The air was now become so cold that our
exercise, violent as it was, scarce kept us warm.”

Tracking day after day is toilsome work. The track is
often among boulders, cobblestones, gravel, sharp rocks,
steep slides, and mud. Once in a while there are stretches
which afford comfortable footing. But hopping about from
rock to rock, jamming the toes and ankles into crevices among
the cobblestones, in addition to having the weight of the
canoe to drag against the current for a thousand miles,
sweating one day and maddened by mosquitoes, and the
next shivering with the cold—such work day after day
would try the endurance of the hardiest.

Thus it was to continue, with occasional days of fine
weather, moderately difficult paddling, sailing now and then,
but in the main a steady grind with painful feet, against a
swift current seldom less than two, averaging four to five,
and often attaining a velocity of eight and ten miles an hour.
Around the points especially, the current frequently assumed
the proportions and speed of a rapid. From the fourth to the
tenth this routine was unvaried, by which time Camsell
Bend was reached. As this course would take them away
from the mountains, Mackenzie, who had been on the look
out unremittingly for natives and what information they
might have regarding the river to the westward, conceived

1**A few miles above Fort Norman on the east side of the river
occasional columns of smoke indicate the presence of fires, which
are consuming the seams of lignite out-cropping in the bank.”

Geol. Sur. Can. Mem. 108, p. 31. These fires have been burning for
137 years, since they were first reported by Mackenzie in 1789.