124 Mackenzie’s Voyages

astounding risks in endeavouring to continue by river rather
than by making a portage here.

“The “Canyon of the Mountain of Rocks,’ or Peace
River Canyon, as it is variously called, is where the Peace
River cuts through the foothills of the Rockies and emerges
on to the plains. According to McLearn, it is a recent topo-
graphic feature, the river having been forced into its _
present channel by a terminal moraine which closed up the
old gap between Portage and Bullhead Mountains, through
which the river formerly flowed. The canyon is about
twenty-five miles long, and the river consists of a series of
foaming rapids for about half the distance; below that the
water 1s calmer, with relatively small drops and a few riffles.
The canyon is quite impassable for navigation. The portage
around the canyon is only fourteen miles in length, as the
river makes a big half-circle bend.” !

The canoe, which carried a load of nearly three tons
and had only a few inches of free-board, had to be carefully
and skilfully moved from one side of the river to the other,
as occasion demanded. It was a risky operation, and might
have ended at any moment in irretrievable disaster. For a
short distance the canoe was tracked along an island, but, in
clearing the point, it was squeezed against a projecting
rock by the force of the current and seriously injured. After
great exertions the craft was repaired, the goods dried and
re-loaded and the course continued about three-quarters of
a mile. Tremendous cliffs walled them in. The river
thundered by in a wild swirl, for the mighty Peace, which
spreads out a mile or so in other places, here hurls itself
through a twenty-five-mile horse-shoe chasm between
walls three hundred feet high, dropping 225 feet in its course

1 Galloway, J. D., Prov. Mineralogist. Ann. Rep. B.C. Min of
Mines, 1923.