the Indian stories on the Indians of
his party was very marked and discouraging. With great difficulty
Mackenzie overcame their objections to proceed, and even succeeded in
persuading one of the Dog-rib Indians to accompany him by the potent
influence of a small kettle, an axe, a knife, and a few other gifts.
This man was a stout young fellow, in a very dirty deerskin coat and
leggings, with a double blue line tattooed on his cheeks from the ears
to the nose, on the bridge of which it met in a blue spot. Hence
Lawrence, following the natural bent of his mind, which he had already
displayed in naming Coppernose, immediately addressed this new recruit
as Bluenose.

These poor savages, although exemplary in the matters of grog and
tobacco, were, we are constrained to admit, a very filthy set of
creatures; very poor also, because utterly destitute of such wealth as
the fur-traders had carried to many of the less remote tribes of
Indians. Nevertheless they possessed a considerable number of
implements of their own manufacture, some of wood and others of bone,
etcetera, which proved them to be possessed of much ingenuity and taste.
The description of their weapons reminds one of those remains of
prehistoric man which we find treasured in our museums, for they had
arrows barbed with horn, flint, iron, and copper, spears shod with bone,
daggers of horn and bone, and axes made of brown or grey stone. The
latter were from six to eight inches long and two thick, having the
inside flat and the outside round, and tapering to an edge, and were
fastened by the middle to wooden handles with a cord of raw skin. They
kindled fires by striking together a piece of white or yellow pyrites
and a flint stone over a piece of touch-wood, and boiled water in
water-tight baskets, by putting a succession of red-hot stones into
them.

From these Indians the explorers learned that they had passed, on their
voyage down the river, large bodies of Indians who inhabit the
mountains.

"He'll never make up his mind to go," observed Reuben, as, when about to
set forth again, he looked at the pale countenance of the Dog-rib who
had agreed to join the party.

Mackenzie had already had a severe argument with him in order to induce
him to fulfil his engagement, and had left him under the impression that
he had been successful; but when the poor man had said farewell to the
tribe, and was on the point of entering the canoe, his courage failed,
and he