94 Srr ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

to come as guide, and they prepared to start
at once.

Soon after leaving the Indian camp the
Parsnip approached the mountains and be-
came very narrow and tortuous. On the 11th
they turned from the main stream up a
branch so small that they could scarcely force
the canoe through. This soon brought them
to a lake where there were beaver, geese, duck,
and swans in great abundance. ‘This I con-
sider,” writes Mackenzie, “as the highest and
southernmost source of the Unjigah or Peace
River.” He was at the headwaters of the
mighty river which he had followed four years
before to its mouth on the Arctic Ocean,
twenty-five hundred miles away; even if he
failed to reach the Pacific his achievement
was great, for he was the first white man to
see the river for two-thirds of its length.
Landing at the head of the lake, they found a
portage eight hundred paces long which led
them over a low ridge between two mountains
to another small lake. On this portage they
crossed the height of land; the second lake
drained to the west and the Pacific. ‘They