--Mountain
Sheep, &c.--Continuation of the Journey.--Unhappy
Accident.--Reflections.--News from Canada.--Hunter's
Lodge.--Pembina and Red Deer Rivers.

On the 19th we raised our camp and followed the shore of the little dry
lake, along a smooth sandy beach, having abandoned our little bark
canoe, both because it had become nearly unserviceable, and because we
knew ourselves to be very near the Rocky Mountains House. In fact, we
had not gone above five or six miles when we discerned a column of smoke
on the opposite side of the stream. We immediately forded across, and
arrived at the post, where we found Messrs. M'Donald, Stuart, and
M'Kenzie, who had preceded us only two days.

The post of the Rocky Mountains, in English, _Rocky Mountains House_, is
situated on the shore of the little lake I have mentioned, in the midst
of a wood, and is surrounded, except on the water side, by steep rocks,
inhabited only by the mountain sheep and goat. Here is seen in the west
the chain of the Rocky Mountains, whose summits are covered with
perpetual snow. On the lake side, _Millet's Rock_, of which I have
spoken above, is in full view, of an immense height, and resembles the
front of a huge church seen in perspective. The post was under the
charge of a Mr. Decoigne. He does not procure many furs for the company,
which has only established the house as a provision depot, with the view
of facilitating the passage of the mountains to those of its _employes_
who are repairing to, or returning from, the Columbia.

People speak so often of the Rocky Mountains, and appear to know so
little about them, that the reader will naturally desire me to say here
a word on that subject. If we are to credit travellers, and the most
recent maps, these mountains extend nearly in a straight line, from the
35th or 36th degree of north latitude, to the mouth of the _Unjighah_,
or _M'Kenzie's river_, in the Arctic ocean, in latitude 65 deg. or 66 deg. N.
This distance of thirty degrees of latitude, or seven hundred and fifty
leagues, equivalent to two thousand two hundred and fifty English miles
or thereabouts, is, however, only the mean side of a right-angled
triangle, the base of which occupies twenty-six degrees of longitude, in
latitude 35 deg. or 36 deg., that is to say, is about sixteen hundred miles
long, while the chain of mountains forms the _hypotenuse_; so that the
real, and as it were diagonal, length of the chain, across the