CHAPTER II. 



LESSER SLAVE RIVER AND LESSER SLAVE 



LAKE. 



It is unnecessary to inform the average reader that the 

 Lesser Slave River connects the Lesser Slave Lake with the 

 Athabasca; any atlas will satisfy him upon that point. But 

 its peculiar colouring he will not find there, and it is this 

 which gives the river its most distinctive character. Once 

 seen, it is easy to account for the hue of the Athabasca below 

 the Lesser Slave River ; for the water of the latter, though of 

 a pale yellow colour in a glass, is of a rich burnt umber in 

 the stream, and when blown upon by the wind turns its spark- 

 ling facets to the sun like the smile upon the cheek of a 

 brunette. Its upward course is like a continuous letter S 

 with occasional S's side by side, so that a point can be crossed 

 on foot in a few minutes which would cost much time to go 

 around. Its proper name, too, is not to be found in the 

 atlases, either English or French. There it is called the Lesser 

 Slave River, but in the classic Cree its name is lyaghchi 

 Eennu Sepe, or the River of the Blackfeet, literally the 

 " River of the Strange People." The lake itself bears the 

 same name, and even now is never called Slave Lake by the 

 Indians in their own tongue. This fact, to my mind, casts 

 additional light upon an obscure prehistoric question, namely, 

 the migration of the great Algic, or Algonquin, race. Its 

 early home was, perhaps, in the far south, or south-west, 

 whence it migrated around the Gulf of Florida, and eastward 

 along the Atlantic coast, spreading up its bays and inlets, and 

 along its great tributary rivers, finally penetrating by the 

 Upper Ottawa to James's, and ultimately to the shores of 



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