320 A SERIES OF RAPIDS. 



to musk oxen and deer. The latter scampered 

 away as we approached, but the former stood 

 stupidly gazing at us : luckily for them, we 

 were not in want of their carcasses. 



An island, near the centre of the river, with 

 thin columns of mist rising suspiciously at quick 

 intervals on each side, made it necessary to land. 

 Having ascertained that there was, as had been 

 expected, a fall, we carried the baggage below 

 it, and the boat was then brought down in a 

 manner which convinced me that M c Kay and 

 Sinclair thoroughly understood their business; 

 for, by dexterous management in the rush of 

 the fall, they avoided the principal danger, and 

 the boat swept into the eddy with the ease and 

 buoyancy of a water-fowl. The stream was 

 very irregular in its dimensions, for it was now 

 a quarter of a mile broad, and continued so for 

 nearly three miles, when it contracted into two 

 hundred yards, and, running in a serpentine 

 direction, formed a series of no less than five 

 rapids, augmented by two streams from the 

 westward. A still sheet of water, bounded to 

 the right by mounds and hills of white sand, 

 with patches of rich herbage, where numerous 

 deer were feeding, brought us to a long and 

 appalling rapid, full of rocks and large bould- 

 ers ; the sides hemmed in by a wall of ice, and 

 the current flying with the velocity and force of 



