The *‘‘Mountain of Rocks”’ I21

apprehensive lest they should influence his Indians to desert.
It appears that an old Indian at the fort who had been at
war beyond the Rocky Mountains had given him an account
of a large river that forked between the mountains and had
directed him tc take the southern branch, saying that from
its headwaters there was a carrying-place of about a day’s
march for a young man to get to the other river, that flowed
towards the midday sun. His son had accompanied him on
that trip, and the old man arranged that his son should
accompany the explorer, but another young man, who had
been refused a place as hunter for the party, persuaded the
son to desert. The instigator of this desertion now appeared
and Mackenzie remarks that under any other circumstances
he would have chastised the man for seducing away his
intended guide. Of the latter no word could be obtained, nor
of the old man, who should have been in this neighbourhood.

The river banks became lower, and the stream itself
widened from three to five hundred yards and was full of
islands and flats. During the day the tracks of many grizzlies
were seen, and the den of one of them was discovered on
an island. It measured ten feet long, five feet high, and six
wide. ‘‘The Indians entertained great apprehension of this
kind of bear, which is called the grisly bear, and they never
venture to attack it but in a party of at least three or four.
Our hunters, though they had been much higher than this
by land, knew nothing of the river.”

At the entrance of a branch it was observed that some
of the wood had been cut with an axe, and it was concluded
that these tools had not been used by any of the Indians
they were acquainted with. Animals were plentiful, and
the scenery occasionally reminded them of the magnificent
stretch opposite the fort. Mackenzie was much taken
with the situation at the mouth of Sinew River, which he