On the following days camps of Beaver Indians were seen, and Mackenzie was somewhat anxious lest they should encourage his hunters to desert, but this did not take place. Game continued abundant, and on the 13th they saw along the river tracks of large bears, some of which were nine inches wide. “We saw one of their dens, or winter quarters, called watee, in an island, which was ten feet deep, five feet high, and six feet wide, but we had not yet seen one of those animals. The Indians entertain 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.”
The land on both sides of the river was high and irregular, and the banks and the rocky cliffs exhibited strata of red, green, and yellow colors. “Some parts, indeed, offer a beautiful scenery, in some degrees similar to that which we passed on the second day of our voyage, and equally enlivened with the elk and the buffalo, who were feeding in great numbers and unmolested by the hunter.” The next day they passed a river, of the mouth of which Mackenzie says: “This spot would be an excellent situation for a fort or factory, as there is plenty of wood and every reason to believe that the country abounds in beaver. As for the other animals, they are in evident abundance, as in every direction the elk and the buffalo are seen in possession of the hills and the plains.” Two elks were killed and a buffalo wounded that day. The land above their camp spread out in an extensive plain, gradually rising to a high ridge, chiefly grassy, and dotted with poplar and white birch trees. “The country is so crowded with animals as to have the appearance, in some places, of a stall-yard, from the state of the ground and the quantity of dung which is scattered over it. The soil is black and light. We this day saw two grisly and hideous bears.”
Although the ascent of the river had not been easy and they had frequently been obliged to unload and repair their canoe, it was not until Sunday, the 19th, that they met rapids and cascades, which presented greater difficulties. The canoe was heavily laden, the current enormously swift, and broken constantly by rocks and shoals; the only means of advance was by the tow-line, and the beach was often narrow or wanting. At the beginning of this very difficult stretch of water they found several islands of solid rock with but little soil upon them, the rock worn away near the water’s surface, but unworn higher up, so that the islands presented, as it were, so many large tables, each of which was supported by a pedestal of a more circumscribed projection. On these islands geese were breeding.