On July 9, we crossed the sixteen mile portage to Fort Smith just below the rapids. We had a comfortable carriage drawn by horses and made the trip in about three hours. Here we boarded the trim-built little steamer, Wrigley, which we found much smaller than the Grahame, but on the whole fairly comfortable. She differed from the Grahame and the Midnight Sun, being built on a different model, the former being like the Mississippi steamers, with flat bottoms, and drawing only about two feet of water, while the Wrigley is similar in construction to the steamers of the lower lakes of Canada, with a screw wheel, and drawing nearly six feet when loaded.
STEAMER “GRAHAME” AT SMITH’S LANDING
CHAPTER VI
More About the Slave River : On Steamer Wrigley : Fine Gardens at Resolution : A Nasty Experience : Bishop Reeves Comes Aboard for a Round Trip : Miss Wilgriss Leaves : Hay River : Fort Prudence : The Little Lake : Fort Simpson : A Pathetic Incident : An Imaginary Cabinet : We Reach Fort Wrigley.
The cargo having all been carted over the portage and loaded on the Wrigley and her consorts, we left Fort Smith at 3.15 P.M., Mountain or Pacific time, on this last stage of our journey to Fort McPherson, in round numbers, 1300 miles distant. The day was cloudy and quite cool. We were at last clear of all obstructions to navigation. Throughout the whole remaining distance there would also be very little darkness, and the steamer was to run both night and day. The country becomes more level than above the rapids. The banks at first thirty or forty feet high become gradually lower with the descent of the river, and the soil reveals a rich alluvial deposit, similar in appearance to that of the Western prairies. We passed Salt River at 5.30 P.M. and Bell Rock a little after, and later Gravel Point, where we saw the last gravel to be met with on these waters.
Thursday, July 12. The boat ran all night and at 8.30 A.M. we were well down the river, being opposite McConnell Island. After leaving Fort Smith the river expands to probably an average width of a mile and a half, in some places much more, with numerous islands on the way. As it widens out the current decreases and the soil held in solution yields to the law of gravity and is deposited, forming numerous islands all the way to the lake. The earth, that once rested securely along the present course of “the Peace” before the waters from the mountains found their way in that direction and commenced that great excavation, is here found in these islands, and the newly formed land that is pushing the southern shore line of Great Slave Lake near the mouth of this river, farther and farther north. How applicable to this situation are the words of Tennyson:
LEAVING FORT SMITH ON THE SLAVE RIVER
“The sound of streams that swift or slow