The character of the country, and the distance they had traveled, left no doubt whatever in their minds that this was the Finlay River, the other head-stream of the Peace River. They therefore now felt as though they knew precisely where they were. Being tired, they pitched their camp not far below the mouth of the Finlay, and busied themselves in looking over their boats and supplies. They knew that the dreaded Finlay rapids lay only two miles below them.
They were now passing down a river which had grown to a very considerable stream, sometimes with high banks, again with shores rather low and marshy, and often broken with many islands scattered across an expanse of water sometimes nearly a quarter of a mile in extent. The last forty miles of the stream to the junction of the Finlay had averaged not more rapid but much heavier than the current had seemed toward the headwaters. The roar of the rapids they approached now came up-stream with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in passing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below this camp made them uneasy.
“Well,” said Rob, as they sat in camp near the shore, “we know where we are now. We have passed the mouth of the McLeod outlet, and we have passed the Nation River and everything else that comes in from the west. Here we turn to the east. It must be nearly one hundred and fifty miles to the real gate of the Rockies—at the Cañon of the Rocky Mountains, as the first traders called it.”
“It looks like a pretty big river now,” said Jesse dubiously.
“I would like to hope it’s no worse than it has been just above here,” said Rob, “but I fear it is, from all I know. Mackenzie got it in high water, and he only averaged half a mile an hour for a long time going up, along in here. Of course coming down we could pick our way better than he could.”
“We have been rather lucky on the whole,” said Alex, “for, frankly, the water has been rather worse for canoes than I thought it would be. Moreover, it is still larger below here. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“What do you mean, Alex?” inquired John.
“You ought not to need to ask me,” replied the old hunter. “You’re all voyageurs, are you not?”