128 THEOUGH THE MACKENZIE BASm 



l^ext morning, crossing the right bank; of the river, and 

 leaving the boat, we walked to the foot of Grand Kapids. 

 Our path, if it could be called such, lay over a toilsome 

 jumble of huge, sharp-edged rocks, overhung by a beetling 

 cliff of reddish-yellow sandstone, much of which seemed on 

 the point of falling. This whole bank, like so much of this 

 part of the river, is planted, almost at regular intervals, 

 with the great circular rocks already referred to. These 

 globular or circtdar masses are a curious feature of this 

 region. They have been shaped, no doubt, by the action of 

 eddying water, yet are so numerous, and so much alike, as 

 to bespeak some abnormally uniform conditions in the past. 



The Grand Rapids — Kitchi Powestik — ^the most formid- 

 able on the river, are divided by a narrow, wooded island, 

 over a quarter of a mile in length, upon which the Hudson's 

 Bay Company have a wooden tramway, the cars being 

 pushed along by hand. Towards the foot of the island is 

 a smaller one near the left shore, and here is the larger 

 cascade, a very violent rapid, with a fall from the crest to 

 the foot of the island of thirty feet, more or less. The nar- 

 rower passage is to the right of the island, and is called the 

 " Free Traders' Channel." The river, in full freshet, was 

 very muddy-looking, detracting much from the beauty of 

 the rapids. 



The Hudson's Bay Company have storehouses at each 

 end of the tramway, but for their own use only. Free- 

 traders have to portage their supplies over a very rough path 

 beneath the cliffs. Both banks of the river are of sandstone, 

 capped on the left by a wall of cream-coloured rock, seventy 

 or eighty feet in height, at a guess. A creek comes in from 

 the west which has cloven the sandstone bank almost to the 

 water's edge ; and running along the top of these sandstone 

 formations are, everywhere, thick layers of coal, which is 

 also found, in a great bed, on the opposite shore, and about 

 three miles back from the river. The coal had been used by 

 a trapper there, and is a good burner and heater, leaving 



