foam as far as eye could see.  The difficulty was to land; for precipices rose on each side in a wall, down which rolled enormous boulders and land-slides of loose earth.  To portage goods up these walls was impossible.  Fastening an eighty-foot tow-line to the bow, Mackenzie leaped to the declivity, axe in hand, cut foothold along the face of the steep cliff to a place where he could jump to level rock, and then, turning, signalled through the roar of the rapids for his men to come on.  The voyageurs were paralyzed with fear.  They stripped themselves ready to swim if they missed the jump, then one by one vaulted from foothold to foothold where Mackenzie had cut till they came to the final jump across water.  Here Mackenzie caught each on his shoulders as the voyageurs leaped.  The tow-line was then passed round trees growing on the edge of the precipice, and the canoe tracked up the raging cascade.  The waves almost lashed the frail craft to pieces.  Once a wave caught her sideways; the tow-line snapped like a pistol shot, for just one instant the canoe hung poised, and then the back-wash of an enormous boulder drove her bow foremost ashore, where the voyageurs regained the tow-line.

[Illustration:  Slave Lake Indians.]

The men had not bargained on this kind of work.  They bluntly declared that it was absurd trying to go up canons with such cascades.  Mackenzie paid no heed to the murmurings.  He got his crew to the top of the hill, spread out the best of a regale—­including tea sweetened with sugar—­and while the men were stimulating courage by a feast, he went ahead to reconnoitre the gorge.  Windfalls of enormous spruce trees, with a thickness twice the height of a man, lay on a steep declivity of sliding rock.  Up this climbed Mackenzie, clothes torn to tatters by devil’s club (a thorn bush with spines like needles), boots hacked to pieces by the sharp rocks, and feet gashed with cuts.  The prospect was not bright.  As far as he could see the river was one succession of cataracts fifty feet wide walled in by stupendous precipices, down which rolled great boulders, shattering to pebbles as they fell.  The men were right.  No canoe could go up that stream.  Mackenzie came back, set his men to repairing the canoe and making axe handles, to avoid the idleness that breeds mutiny, and sent Mackay ahead to see how far the rapids extended.  Mackay reported that the portage would be nine miles over the mountain.

Leading the way, axe in hand, Mackenzie began felling trees so that the trunks formed an outer railing to prevent a fall down the precipice.  Up this trail they warped the canoe by pulling the tow-line round stumps, five men going in advance to cut the way, five hauling and pushing the canoe.  In one day progress was three miles.  By five in the afternoon the men were so exhausted that they went to bed—­if bare ground with sky overhead could be called bed.