At last they left the
river to find their way across the mountains till they should reach
the headwaters of a stream flowing towards the Pacific Ocean.
Sometimes they only accomplished three miles a day, having to carry
all their goods and their canoe. The mountainous country was covered
with splendid forests of spruce, pine, cypress, poplar, birch, willow,
and many other kinds of trees, with an undergrowth of gooseberries,
currants, and briar roses. The travellers generally followed paths
made by the elk,[5] just as in the dense forests of Africa the way
sometimes is cleared for human travellers by the elephant. Every now
and again they resumed their journey on the river between the falls
and cascades. The mountains seemed to be a solid mass of limestone, in
some places without any covering of foliage.
[Footnote 5: For the word "elk" Mackenzie uses "moose deer". "Elk" in
the Canadian Dominion is misapplied to the great Wapiti red deer.]
"In no part of the north-west", writes Mackenzie, "did I see so much
beaver work" (along the eastern branch of the Peace River). In some
places the beavers had cut down acres of large poplars, and were
busily at work on their labours of dam-making during the night,
between the setting and the rising sun.
Gnats and mosquitoes came with the intense heat of June to make life
almost unbearable.
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