Page:Across the sub-Arctics of Canada (1897).djvu/126

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found; and for a peace-offering a plug of tobacco was left upon it.[1]

From our camp at White Mountain, on the morning of the 23rd, we again entered the river, which for ten or twelve miles carried us off to the eastward; then turning sharply to the northward and flowing swiftly between high, steep banks of sand, it widened out into what has been named Lady Marjorine Lake, a body of water about ten miles long by three or four wide. Through this we passed and at its north-western extremity regained the river.

It began with a rough, rocky rapid, in running which my canoe struck a smooth rock, was smashed in the bottom, and nearly filled with water; but though in a sinking condition we managed to get it ashore. Though the contents were soaked, everything was landed without serious damage. After a delay of two hours we were again in the stream, and being borne away to the westward—the direction opposite to that we were now anxious to follow.

The river was here a noble stream, deep and swift, with a well-defined channel and high banks of rock or sand. Near the north bank there extended for some miles a high range of dark but snow-capped trappean hills, of about five hundred feet in height.

On the night of the 24th we camped at the base of two conspicuous conical peaks of trap, named by us the Twin Mountains.

  1. My brother in revisiting the Barren Lands during the summer of 1894 was hailed by the natives many miles south of the scene of this incident as the "Kudloonah Peayouk" (good white man) who had regard for the goods of an Eskimo, and left on his "kometic" a piece of tobacco.