ALBERTA 



53 



increasing current. As we entered the channel leading to the 

 island, the roar of the rapids drowned the voice of the bows- 

 man, who indicated the channel to the steersman by signals, 

 but losing his head at a critical moment, he raised the wrong 

 hand, resulting in the boat being swept against a rock with a 

 swing and lurch that nearly capsized us. The crash of timbers 

 and the yells of the frightened Indians mingled with the roar 

 of the rapids, over which it would have been certain death to 

 have gone. Happily for us, the boat was swept clear and 

 reached the landing place safely. We were a day and a half 

 in portaging our boat and cargo. I occupied a part of this 

 time in collecting fossils. The river here cuts through a Cre- 

 taceous sandstone, containing such a large number of nodular 

 concretions that they pave the bed of the stream as the softer 

 matrix is worn away. These boulders are from six inches to 

 fifteen feet in diameter, and most of them are as smooth and 

 spherical as if they had been turned in a lathe. In pouring 

 over such a bed at a steep pitch, the whirling, foam-crested 

 waters are tossed and dashed in such wild confusion that no 

 boat could live there for a moment. 



Near the head of the island stands a small storehouse, near 

 which a large quantity of flour was piled in sacks. It had lain 

 there since the preceding summer, with no other protection than 

 the double sacks in which all flour for the North is placed. 

 The first rain had formed a hard crust on the exposed parts and 

 this afterwards protected the interior. 



Upon this island, on the 6th of May, we encountered the first 

 mosquitoes of the season, and were to know no peace by day 

 or by night, in house, or tent, or boat, owing to their persistent, 

 malevolent, fiendish persecution, until the snows of autumn 

 should banish them for another eight months; for there are 

 but two seasons in the Land of Desolation — a snow season and 

 a mosquito season. 



Capt. Segur had placed an Indian, familiar with the rapids, 

 at the steering oar, to guide us through the rough water 

 below the island. As a result of a prolonged debauch upon 

 smuggled whiskey, he was too weak to manage the heavy 

 sweep, and we were carried through, side on, not only shipping 

 water, but in imminent danger of the old boat going to pieces 

 in the breakers. The river has a total descent of three hun- 



