CHAPTER XVIII 



ON A RAFT DOWN THE PORCUPINE RIVER 



The morning of August 19th my Indians turned towards 

 Macpherson and I began my long drift alone down the 

 Bell and Porcupine Rivers. I did not then realize how 

 long it was to be, for this was my first journey at the 

 mercy of a river current. By the map and as the crow 

 flies the distance did not seem so formidable. But the 

 Bell is one of the slowest of rivers, flowing through the 

 most crooked of valleys, so that my estimate of the dis- 

 tance was multiplied by two and my hope of speed cut 

 down by at least half. Under ordinary circumstances 

 I think I might have enjoyed the lackadaisical Bell but 

 now I was in a race. I estimated that by this time the 

 bad news would be somewhere on the Slave River be- 

 tween Great Slave Lake and Athabasca Lake. To be 

 sure of winning I had to get to a telegraph office by the 

 first of September. If I were much later than that, 

 nothing but some bad luck to Harrison could give me 

 the good luck of winning. 



The current varied a great deal. Once or twice a day 

 it cheered me up for a while by speeding along at three 

 miles an hour. But much of the time it was only half 

 a mile an hour and I think the average was somewhere 

 between a mile and a mile and a half. Traveling 

 twenty- four hours a day 1 would be making at the most 

 thirty-six miles, and thirty-six miles by the river would 

 be no more than twenty miles in a straight line. By 



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