48 Sir ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

a half miles, some of them very rough. In the
rapid at Pelican Portage one of the Indian
canoes was lost; the woman who was its sole
occupant barely escaped. The last portage
bore the melancholy name of Portage des
Noyés, so common on al] the highways of the
fur-trade, in memory of the drowning of five
voyageurs in 1786. In spite of the gruelling
work at the portages, thirty miles were made
that day. It took the party nearly four days
more to reach Great Slave Lake, because
violent wind and rain delayed them for a day
anda half. The total length of Slave River is
about three hundred miles, and Mackenzie
reached its mouth on the morning of the
seventh day, June 9.

Great Slave Lake, fifth in size of all the
lakes in America, is still a terror to the navi-
gators of the north. Mackenzie found it
covered with ice, and the weather became
cold enough to end for a time the plague of
mosquitoes. He steered inside some islands
along a narrow ice-free channel to a spot, a
few miles to the east of the river’s mouth,
where Leroux had built some huts in 1786,