126 THEOUGH THE MACKENZIE BASIN 



proved to be a prime place for our camp, with plenty of 

 dead fallen and standing timber, and soon four or five 

 " long fires " -were blazing, a substantial supper discussed, 

 and comfort succeeded misery. The next day (Sunday) was 

 much enjoyed as a day of rest, the half-breeds at their 

 beloved games, the officials writing letters. The weather 

 wks variable; the clouds broke and gathered by turns, with 

 slight rain towards evening, and then it cleared. As a night 

 camp it was picturesque, the full moon in the south gleam- 

 ing over the turbid water, and the boatmen lounging around 

 the fires like so many brigands. 



Next morning we surmounted the Brule Rapid — Pusitao 

 Powestik- — short but powerful, with a sharp pointed rock 

 at its head, very troublesome to get around. Above this 

 rapid the bank consists of a solid, vertical rampart of red 

 sandstone, its base and top and every crack and crevice 

 clothed with a rich vegetation — a most beautiful and strik- 

 ing scene, forming a gigantic amphitheatre, concentred by 

 the seeming closing-in of the left bank at Point Brule upon 

 the long straight line of sandstone wall on the right. Noth- 

 ing finer, indeed, could be imagined in all this remarkable 

 river's remarkable scenery than this impi-essive view, not 

 from jutting peaks, for the sky-line of the banks runs paral- 

 lel with the water, but from the antique grandeur of their 

 sweep and apparent junction. 



That afternoon we rounded Point Brule, a high, bold cliff 

 of sandstone with three " lop-sticks " upon its top. The 

 Indian's lop-stick, called by the Cree piskootenusk, is a 

 sort of living talisman which he connects in some mysterious 

 way with his ovsti fate, and which he will often go many 

 miles out of his direct course to visit. Even white men fall 

 in with the fetish, and one of the three we saw was called 

 " Lambert's lop-stick." I myself had one made for me 

 by Gros Oreilles, the Saulteau Chief, nearly forty years 

 ago, in the forest east of Pointe du Chene, in what is now 

 Manitoba. They are made by stripping a tall spruce tree 



