Tue Great JouRNEY on

path over the height of land; and they were
wrestling all the time with the rushing waters
of snow-fed torrents. This stage was rather
more than two hundred miles in length, and
took them seventeen days.

The current in the Parsnip was so swift
that some of the party walked along the shore
whenever this was possible, and even with the
lightened canoe ten or a dozen miles were a
hard and long day’s travel. On June 6 the
current was too strong for paddling, the depth
too great for poling, and the banks too thickly
wooded for towing, so that for some miles they
could make headway only by pulling them-
selves along by the branches of trees. About
this time they passed without noticing it the
mouth of the Pack River; this, had they
known it, would have been their easiest way
to the Fraser River, for it leads to Giscome
Portage and is still the regular highway to
the region in which they were. The heart-
breaking work was telling on the spirits of the
men, and Mackenzie was beginning to fear
that he was on a wild-goose chase. He had