The women pick berries and Alexander MacKenzie climbs a high hill to try and see a way out of this foggy swamp of a lake stretching north in two horns two hundred miles from east to west. There was ice ahead and there was fog ahead, and it was quite plain “English Chief” did not know the way. MacKenzie followed the direction of the drifting ice. Dog Rib Indians here vow there is no passage through the ice, and the cold rains slush down in torrents. It is not dark longer than four hours, but the nights are so cold the lake is edged with ice a quarter of an inch thick. MacKenzie secures a Red Knife Indian as guide and pushes on through the flag-grown swamps, now edging the ice fields, now in such rough water men must bail to keep the canoes afloat, now trying to escape from the lake east, only to be driven back by the ice, west; old “English Chief” threatening to cut the Red Knife’s throat if he fails them. Three weeks have they been fog-bound and ice-bound and lost on Slave Lake, but they find their way out by the west channel at last, a strong current, a stiff wind and blankets up for sail. July 1st, they pass the mouth of a very large river, the Liard; July 5th, a very large camp of Dog Rib Indians, who warn them “old age will come before” MacKenzie “reaches the sea” and that the wildest monsters guard Big River. MacKenzie obtains a Dog Rib for a guide, but the Dog Rib has no relish for his part, and to keep him from running away as they sleep at night, MacKenzie takes care to lie on the edge of the filthy fellow’s vermin-infested coat. A greenish hue of the sea comes on the water as they pass Great Bear Lake to the right, but the guide has become so terrified he must now be bodily held in the canoe. The banks of the river rise to lofty ramparts of white rock. Signs of the North grow more frequent. Trees have dwindled in size to little sticks. The birds and hares shot are all whitish-gray with fur pads or down on their feet. On July 8th, the guide escapes, but a Hare Indian comes along, who, by signs, says it is only ten days to the sea. Presently, the river becomes muddy and breaks into many channels. Provisions are almost gone, and MacKenzie promises his men if he does not find the sea within a week, he will turn back. On the 11th of July, the sun did not set, and around deserted camp fires were found pieces of whalebone. MacKenzie’s hopes mounted. Only the Eskimos use whalebone for tent poles. Footprints, too, were seen in the sand, and a rare beauty of a black fox--with a pelt that was a hunter’s fortune--scurried along the sands into hiding. The Hare Indian guide began talking of “a large lake” and “an enormous fish” which the Eskimo hunted with spears. “Lake?” Had not MacKenzie promised his men it was to be the sea? The voyageurs were discouraged. They did not think of the big “fish” being a whale, or the riffle in the muddy channels the ocean tide, not though the water slopped into the tents under the baggage and “the large lake”