“The morning was foggy, and at three we were on the water...a small river flowing in from the right…” The Nechako River. This morning he passed by the future sites of Fort George, and through the present day location of the city of Prince George. At about eight they reached the rapids above the Fort George Canyon, (today a provincial park) and found themselves carrying again.
Picture 1. Fort George Canyon today. Photo by lepetergmail
It's a repeating story the entire trip; the canoe is broken, then fixed, then broken, then patched again and again. The canoe by now was, “...carried with great difficulty; as from her frequent repairs, and not always of the usual materials, her weight was such, that she cracked and broke on the shoulders of the men who bore her. The labour and fatigue of this undertaking, from eight till twelve, beggars all description...here I took a median altitude which gave me 53.42.20 North latitude.” Again, very accurate latitude reckoning on his part, as that location pinpoints just above the canyon, where the “great body of water, at the same time tumbling in successive cascades...rolls through this narrow passage in a very turbid current, and full of whirlpools.”
A large part of today's journal entry describes (first) contact. As I said before, it is beyond me or the scope of this blog to describe or quote from these entries. Interested readers should read the journals and other writings for themselves in order to develop a better understanding of that topic.
“On the banks of the river there was great plenty of wild onions, which when mixed up with our pemmican was a great improvement of it…”
Picture 2. Wild Onions. Photo by Hank Shaw.
“At half past seven we landed for the night, where a small river flowed in from the right...The banks were overshadowed by lofty firs, and wide-spreading cedars.”
His camp of this day was likely on a river island, about 3 ½ miles NW of the present day community of Hixon, B.C.
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