42 . TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



We left Fort Simpson at 5 a.m. on July 17th, and in four hours 

 caught first sight of the Rocky Mountains. The snow-clad peaks 

 of the Nahanni Range, which attain a height of about 5000 feet 

 above sea level, served to break the monotony of the compara- 

 tively level landscape through which we had travelled for the past 

 si:^ weeks. 



The weather had continued very hot, with only an exception 

 of a day or two, from our start, but whether from the effect of 

 the mountains or not, we experienced a very decided change in the 

 temperature immediately we reached their vicinity, and from this 

 on we suffered no more from the excessive heat, which had been 

 as unpleasant as it was unexpected. We had counted on escaping 

 the usual July heat, but so far it had really been more oppressive 

 and certainly more constant, extending right through the long 

 twenty-four hour day, than I had ever before experienced. 



It strikes the observer as extraordinary that the Mackenzie in 

 its way to the sea from Great Slave lake should bear off to the 

 west, so far as to necessitate its cutting its way between two 

 ranges of the Rocky Mountains, where a much shorter course and 

 apparently one through a more level country lay open to the east 

 into Coronation Gulf. 



At the dis ance of 136 miles below Simpson, we reach Fort 

 Wrigley. This is a new post; the old one of the same name 

 twenty-five miles above having been abandoned owing to its un- 

 healthy locality. The country about Fort Wrigley is fairly well 

 wooded. I noticed a spruce'log, cut in the vicinity which measured 

 twenty inches in diameter. 



The Nahanni river, which is a considerable stream, flows from 

 the west and joins the Mackenzie about half-way between Simpson 

 and Wrigley. Just north of it rises Mount Camsell, a snow-clad 

 peak 5,000 feet high. 



Below Wrigley the river narrows to from a half to three 

 quarters of a mile in width. This continues for some distance and 

 then widens out as we proceed down the stream. Two noted 

 mountain peaks known as Mount Bompas and Mount Wrigley 

 are seen between Wrigley and Norman. About twenty miles 

 above Fort Norman and on the left side of the river the clay banks 

 assume a very red appearance and the people use the earth as 

 paint. This condition of the earth has been produced by fire in 

 the coal seams. For several miles along the route the fire is now 

 apparently extinct, but as we reach a point eight miles above Fort 



