THE Great JouRNEY 97

amount of bark and gum used in repairs. On
June 15 they resumed their journey, carrying
some of the baggage along the shore on account
of the weakness of the canoe. F inally after
three days of incessant toil, during which the
guide deserted and they had to portage
through swamps and to stop continually to
mend the canoe, on the evening of the 17th
they arrived at the bank of a large river. “At
length we enjoyed, after all our toil and anxi-
ety, the inexpressible satisfaction of finding
ourselves on the bank of a navigable river, on
the west side of the first great range of moun-
tains.”

(3) In the Valley of the Fraser

The river on the banks of which they
stood was the Fraser, and Mackenzie was
almost certainly the first white man to see its
waters anywhere on their long course from the
Rockies to its mouth on the Pacific. He now
believed that all the greatest difficulties were
behind him: he had only to descend the river
for an unknown distance to find the ocean.
The exact situation of the party was on the
North Fork, about thirty miles above its junc-