The “Grand View” is a name given to an expanded portion of the Mackenzie below Fort Good Hope, about twenty miles in length. Mr. McConnell writes:—“The river here is almost straight, but curves gently to the north, and is from two to three miles wide. Its great width gives it more the appearance of a lake than a river, and in no other part of the Mackenzie is the magnitude of the mighty volume of water which this river carries to the sea, impressed so forcibly on the mind. The banks are low and the sinuous shore-lines show a succession of wooded points stretching out until concealed by the haze of the atmosphere. The bordering plains slope gently down almost to the water’s edge, and are covered with a scattered growth of willow, spruce and tamarack, with here and there patches of aspens on the drier ridges.”
A little over two miles below Fort Good Hope, Hare Indian river flows into the Mackenzie on its east side. It is about two hundred yards wide at its mouth, and is said to preserve this width for a long distance. The Indians report that this stream rises in a range of hills on the northwest side of Great Bear lake, but about its navigability Mr. Ogilvie could learn nothing.
Twenty-two miles lower down Loon river enters from the east. This river is from eighty to one hundred yards wide. An old man whom Mr. Ogilvie met at Fort Good Hope had explored this stream for some distance and gave him the following notes:—For eight miles there is good navigation, then a rapid half a mile long occurs, at the head of which is a lake about three miles long and one broad, in which the Indians catch many fish. This is called “Rorrie lake” and, some distance above it, is another some two miles in diameter, and called “Round lake” from its shape. Above this again is a succession of lakes for many days’ travel.
An Eskimo Boy at Arctic Red river.
One hundred and thirty miles below Loon river a stream one hundred yards wide enters from the northeast. This is a river which the old man at Fort Good Hope described to Mr. Ogilvie as one up which a Hudson’s Bay Company’s officer went many years ago to its source, which he found to be not far from the head waters of Anderson river, which flows into Arctic ocean. It would appear from the old man’s statement that several trips up it have been made since, but this information was vague, and Mr. Ogilvie afterwards met no one who could give him a reliable account of this river.
Sixty miles lower down, Red river enters the Mackenzie on its west side just at the foot of the Narrows. It is about two hundred yards wide at its mouth and appears to be shallow. As far as Mr. Ogilvie could learn from persons acquainted with the river, it comes from a flat, swampy country.
Where the River Branches.
Where the upper end of the branch of the Mackenzie channel on which Fort McPherson is situated connects with Mackenzie proper, according to Mr. Ogilvie:—“The channel is three-fourths of a mile wide, but it is only one of four, there being four large islands there. The whole width of the river cannot be less than three or four miles.
“Looking northward down the westerly channel the view is bounded by the sky and widens in the distance so that one can fancy he is looking out to sea. This can hardly be so; but, from the altitude of the bank where I stood, added to my own height, the horizon must have been six miles away, and a bank in the channel of equal height to that on which I stood would have been visible twice that distance. Now, if the supposed bank was timbered, as was that on which I stood, it would be visible ten or twelve miles farther, but none was in sight.