NARRATIVE. 88 



The post is still an important one, as being the portal to the Red 

 River country, Lake Winnipeg, and the north-west, and furnishes 

 various supplies to other posts, among other things, of canoes, of 

 which some seventy or eighty were lying here in store. It stands 

 on the left bank of the northern mouth of the river Kaministiquia, 

 about half a mile from the lake. Outside, close to the water, are the 

 log-cabins of the Canadians attached to the post, and on the plain 

 across the river the birch-bark lodges of the Indian hunters. 



Mr. Mackenzie, the gentleman in charge, received us very kindly, 

 and handed to us a number of letters and newspapers that had been 

 forwarded hither from the Sault, by the propeller, which had come 

 up the south shore and touched at Prince's Location, about twenty 

 miles west of this. 



July 21s. Spent the day here. Wild pigeons, cross-bills, and 

 ravens about the fort, and partridges in the swamp. Bathed in the 

 river ; the bottom muddy, and the water warm. Mr. M. says that 

 before a gale from the northward the river falls sometimes eighteen 

 inches in twenty-four hours. This they supposed to be owing to a 

 heaping up of the water on the southern shore (where these gales 

 usually commence,) by the wind, causing a corresponding depression 

 on this side. The fact, more accurately described perhaps as a 

 difference of atmospheric pressure on the two sides of the lake, was 

 afterwards confirmed by several persons. We decided to ascend the 

 river as far as the Kakabeka (Kah-kuhbeka) Falls, twenty-five miles, 

 to-morrow. Mr. Mackenzie kindly offered to go with us, and fur- 

 nished us with whatever was necessary for the excursion. 



This evening our men, with some of the employes of the post, had 

 a dance in a cabin near the Fort. The music consisted of a squeak- 

 ing fiddle, and none of the fair sex honored the assemblage with 

 their presence, yet they stamped away half the night with the 

 greatest' jollity. 



July 22c?. We started this morning accordingly, in three canoes, 

 Mr. M. following after in a little cockleshell about a dozen feet long. 

 The men in the two large canoes were placed two on a seat and furnish- 

 ed with paddles instead of oars, and there was a good deal of rivalry 

 between them for the first few miles, the paddles dipping with won- 

 derful rapidity, so that they looked like a row of tailors sewing 



