Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 6).djvu/360

 as we have already seen, flows to the west, and falls into the Columbia, takes its rise in one of them; while the other gives birth to one of the branches of the Athabasca, which runs first eastward, then northward, and which, after its junction with the Unjighah, north of the Lake of the Mountains, takes the name of Slave river, as far [as] the lake of that name, and afterward that of {292} M'Kenzie river, till it empties into, or is lost in, the Frozen ocean.[164] Having cut a large pile of wood, and having, by tedious labor for nearly an hour, got through the ice to the clear water of the lake on which we were encamped, we supped frugally on pounded maize, arranged our bivouac, and passed a pretty good night, though it was bitterly cold. The most common wood of the locality was cedar and stunted pine. The heat of our fire made the snow melt, and by morning the embers had reached the solid ice: the depth from the snow surface was about five feet.

On the 15th, we continued our route, and soon began to descend the mountain. At the end of three hours, we reached the banks of a stream—the outlet of the second lake above mentioned—here and there frozen over, and then again tumbling down over rock and pebbly bottom in a thousand fantastic gambols; and very soon we had to ford it. After a tiresome march, by an extremely difficult path in the midst of woods, we encamped in the evening under some cypresses. I had hit my right knee against the branch {293} of a fallen tree on the first day of our march, and now began to suffer acutely with it. It was