Over the Divide 137

night. While fighting upward against a rapid current among
a network of islands next day, Mackenzie observed two
large fallen trees, which had been undermined by the river,
and thought that the reports they had heard the night before
were due to the crash of these river-side giants.

Beaver-work was everywhere evident about twenty-five
miles from the forks, Mackenzie, Mackay, and the Indians
usually walked through the woods to lighten the canoe.
The two hunters, with respect for the tradition of their
guild, were averse to helping in the navigation of the craft,
and had to be allowed to sit idly aboard. Hence to keep
them busy hunting, and to relieve the canoe of some of its
burden, they were kept on shore as much as possible.

It was difficult to find a dry spot to camp. Having pitched
their tents on the only dry gravel visible on the night of
the fourth, they found themselves and their canoe and bag-
gage in the water next morning from the rapid rise of the
river in the night. The large amount of beaver-work seen
on the Parsnip leads Mackenzie to say that in no other -
part of the North-West had he observed so much evidence
of their presence in an equal distance. In places they had
cut down several acres of large poplars. ‘They work at night,
but many were seen by the travellers in the day.

Since 31 May when they entered the Parsnip their toil-
some ascent had continued. The river, still rising daily, was
not yet at its highest, but even at this stage progress was
extremely slow and trying. The writer has observed a fall
of twenty feet in the Parsnip at Finlay Forks in the month
of July. In the early part of July when the water is still
fairly high, the distance from the Pack to the Forks, which
is about one hundred miles, can be made quite easily in
twelve hours without much further exertion than steering
the canoe.