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.
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