Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/231

Rh the ice, recently cleft by the stream, formed two solid walls, in some places forty feet high. They towed their boat with great danger in consequence of the strength of the current, pent up and contracted by these frozen cliffs, along the top of which lay their own slippery and insecure path. The icy masses, in many places undermined and honeycombed by the action of the water, threatened equally the boat that passed underneath, and the men who walked above. In this manner they reached the head of "the rapid" on the 10th of July, a week from the period of our separation. There they encountered the ice from the lake, which had just begun to break up, and came driving down before the easterly winds. They were compelled to land their cargo, and haul up their boat with the utmost precipitation; and the Indian hunters lost one of their canoes. The ice continued descending with fearful rapidity, large fragments being often forced upwards by the pressure, and sometimes choking the passage, till the accumulated weight of water and ice triumphantly burst the barrier. From the rapids it cost the party a fortnight's labour to reach the head of the river, a distance of only thirty miles. During this interval, the fisherman, with all the dogs, had been sent by land to the lake, where he