154 THE AMERICAN MAINLAND 



There were rapids day by day affording almost every 

 possible chance of wreck except that due to driftwood ; 

 the two worst being one where the stream descends for 

 three-quarters of a mile in a deep but narrow and 

 crooked channel which it has cut through the foot 

 of a hill of five hundred or six hundred feet high, 

 confined between perpendicular cliffs resembling stone 

 walls varying in height from eighty to a hundred and 

 fifty feet, on which lies a mass of fine sand ; the body 

 of the river pent within this narrow chasm dashing 

 furiously round the projecting rocky columns as it dis- 

 charges itself at the northern extremity in a sheet of 

 foam. The other being where the river flows between 

 lofty stone cliffs, reddish clay rocks and shelving banks 

 of white clay, and is full of shoals. Franklin's people 

 had entered this rapid before they were aware of it, 

 and the steepness of the cliffs prevented them from 

 landing, so that they owed their preservation to the swift- 

 ness of their descent. Two waves made a complete 

 breach over the canoes ; a third would probably have 

 filled and overset them, which would have proved fatal 

 to all on board. This Escape Rapid, as it was named, 

 was, as it were, the gate into the territory of the Eskimos 

 who were soon met with in small parties all the way 

 down to the sea. It was passed on the 15th of July ; 

 three days afterwards the Indians bade farewell to the 

 expedition in the morning, and in the afternoon the 

 canoes were afloat on the Arctic Ocean. 



From the river mouth Wentzel returned, as arranged, 

 with despatches, taking with him a number of voyageurs 

 and others, thus reducing the party to twenty in all in 

 two canoes. In these Franklin, nearly two years after 



