- portment, and I have never seen more sincere piety than
they exhibited."
The gentlemen of the English Company were now at the end of their chief difficulties and troubles. They gladly threw away their snow shoes to take horses for four days; at Fort Jasper they were to enter skiffs, to go to Fort Assiniboine, on the river Athabasca. For myself, I had to try the snow shoes for the first time in my life; by means of them, I had to ascend those frightful ramparts, the barriers of snow, which separate the Atlantic world from the Pacific Ocean. I have, in my previous letters, already told you, that this is probably the most elevated point of the Rocky Mountains, where five great rivers derive their sources, {206} viz.: the north-branch of the Sascatshawin, flowing into Lake Winnepeg, the Athabasca and Peace rivers, uniting and flowing into Great Slave Lake, which is discharged into the Northern Ocean, by the Mackenzie, the most solitary of rivers. From the bosom of these mountains the Columbia and Frazer rivers derive water from a thousand fountains and streams.
We had now seventy miles to travel in snow shoes, in order to reach the boat encampment on the banks of the Columbia. We proposed to accomplish this in two days and a half. The most worthy and excellent Messrs. Rowan and Harriot, whose kindness at the Rocky Mountain House and Fort Augustus I shall ever acknowledge, were of opinion, that it was absolutely impossible for me to accomplish the journey, on account of my heavy mould, and they wished to dissuade me from attempting it. However, I thought I could remedy the inconvenience of my surplus stock, by a vigorous fast of thirty days, which I cheerfully underwent. I found myself much lighter indeed, and started off somewhat encouraged, over snow sixteen feet deep. We went in single file—alternately
