Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/340

310 required for the land journey, were secured from beasts of prey in a cache of ponderous stones; all that we carried with us scarcely amounting to thirty pounds each man.

On the 10th, striking straight out through thin dead woods, and barrens abounding in small lakes, we fell upon Kendall River at the end of ten miles, about half a league below our spring provision station. It was only knee-deep there, full of large stones, and, like Dease River on the opposite side of the height of land, must be quite unnavigable, except in the month of June. I may take this opportunity of observing, that the actual descent of the former stream, though its course be shorter, appeared to us little inferior to that of the latter. The Coppermine, therefore, in its course of seventy miles from Kendall River to the sea, makes a descent equal to that of the whole of Bear Lake River, itself a rapid stream, together with that of the Mackenzie, below their confluence,—a united distance of between five and six hundred miles. In the evening, as we crossed a desolate valley full of lakes, a cloud of snow geese suddenly poured over the brow of a neighbouring hill, and alighted about the lakes. Deer were scarce; but, having wounded a small one, we were surprised to see the biggest of our Esquimaux dogs,