Tue VoyacE To THE Arctic 47

Lake in the winter of 1772, and had gone some
miles up the Slave River on the ice; Leroux,
Mackenzie’s companion, had traded at Great
Slave Lake on Pond’s orders in 1786, and since
then had passed up and down the Slave River
several times.

On June 4 the drastic routine of travel-
ling on which Mackenzie insisted was begun.
The regular hour of starting each day on which
movement was possible was between 2.30 and
5 in the morning, and camp was rarely made
before 6 at night, often not until 8. On the
second day of the journey they started at 4
and made camp at 7.30, after covering sev-
enty miles; this was an unusually long day’s
run, though later on distances of 79 and 72
miles were covered. On June 5 they reached
the series of rapids, fourteen miles long, which
make necessary the only portages between
Chipewyan and the Arctic Ocean. To-day
these rapids are avoided by a single portage
over a road from Fort Fitzgerald to Fort
Smith, and motors and waggons make trans-
port easy. In Mackenzie’s time there were
six separate portages, totalling about two and