130 SOURCES OF THE SASKATCHEWAN 



On Thursday, October 20, the day broke gray and unsettled, 

 with the highest mountains touched by clouds. We continued 

 our march up the Saskatchewan valley, and urged the horses 

 rapidly over a level gravel plain at such speed as to make in all 

 ten miles. On the west side of the valley there is a stupendous 

 wall of rock between 11,000 and 12,000 feet high, which termi- 

 nates in the giant peak of Mt Forbes, a little to the north. About 

 four miles from our camping place there is a group of curious 

 rounded hills rising like forested islands from the sea of gravel. 



There was a strong raw wind against us, and because of our 

 water-soaked boots, half frozen by contact with snow, it was alto- 

 gether too cold to keep in the saddle long, and every one walked 

 most of the time. We made camp in a miserable place of stunted 

 timber half killed by gravel which had been washed over the 

 place by some change of the river's course not many }^ears be- 

 fore. The river here divides into three streams. The smallest, 

 near our camp, comes from the Howse pass, less than three miles 

 distant; the other two come from a valley to the southeast, all, 

 curiously enough, flowing on different sides of a flat valley. In 

 the afternoon I walked some three miles up the valley to where 

 the lesser stream comes in from the west, and as it heads at the 

 base of Mt Forbes, I followed it a mile or so farther, till presently 

 the current became rapid, the valley narrow, and the water 

 closely hemmed in by rocky banks, so that walking was very 

 difficult. The snow was a foot deep in this little valley, where 

 the sun and wind could not exert their influence as in the open. 

 The stream on the other side of the valley is larger and comes 

 from a glacier several miles distant. This whole region was very 

 thoroughly examined last summer by Messrs Baker, Collie, and 

 Stutfield, who not only explored the large glacier, which is sup- 

 posed to be 10 or 15 miles long, but went up the other stream 

 several miles to the base of Mt Forbes, in the hope of ascending 

 it. The flood of waters that sweeps down here in summer from 

 the long glacier has cut channels three or four feet deep, lined 

 with immense boulders, across the whole bottom of the valley. 

 This is the chief stream or source of the Saskatchewan. 



During the night the wind came up in fitful gusts; the stars 

 were no longer bright points, but foggy spots seen through a thin 

 mist ; bands of cloud swept along the mountain sides almost as 

 low as our camp, and at length the whole sky was overcast. The 

 barometer was much lower at midnight. By 1 a. m. snow began 



