DOWN THE MACKENZIE RIVER 21 



humorist Lee was one of these. He had never seen the 

 Grand Rapids of the Athabasca and everybody knew he 

 had never seen them. But both Indians and whites had 

 told him much about how dangerous they were. By 

 watching Indians farther up river, he had formed a con- 

 tempt for their boatmanship, and when he heard that 

 some Indians had run the rapids in canoes he went to 

 Anderson and succeeded in borrowing a small new Peter- 

 borough that we were carrying to sell to some wealthy 

 Indian down the river. Getting into this canoe he pad- 

 dled towards the rapids. To the astonishment of these 

 of us who knew little about rivercraft, he turned his 

 canoe around as he was approaching the rapids and ran 

 the half mile of seething water backward. This im- 

 pressed the local Indians even more than it did the white 

 men, especially as they knew that he had not seen the 

 rapids before. 



Below the Grand Rapids we took to the scows and navi- 

 gated the rest of the distance to Fort McMurray more 

 rapidly and far more pleasantly. We had several ex- 

 citing rapids to run, and once a scow was thrown against 

 a boulder and broken so badly that it sank just at the 

 foot of the rapids and as the crew were approaching the 

 bank. The sugar it carried and similar trade goods were 

 entirely spoilt. A rather amusing circumstance was that 

 a bale containing ribbons of all colors became soaking wet. 

 The colors were not fast, and when the ribbons were taken 

 out to dry, c ich. was found to have upon it a little of the 

 color of all the others. I imagined this would ruin the 

 ribbons, but was told that the consignment was for one 

 of the remote posts on the Liard branch of the Mackenzie 

 and that the Indians up there would not mind. One of 

 the traders said that you never could tell exactly how 



