(Yellow Head
Pass).... _The river meanders much, ... and we cut across, ... holding
by one another's hands, ... wading to the hips in water, dashing in,
frozen at one point, thawed at the next, ... frozen before we dashed in,
... our men carrying blankets and provisions on their heads; ... four
days' hard work before we got to Jasper House at the source of the
Athabasca, sometimes camping on snow twenty feet deep, so that the fires
we made in the evening were fifteen or twenty feet below us in the
morning."_

They had now crossed the mountains, and taking to canoes again paddled
down-stream to the _portage_ between Athabasca River and the
Saskatchewan. Tramping sixty miles, they reached Fort Augustus
(Edmonton) on the Saskatchewan, where canoes were made on the spot, and
the _voyageurs_ launched down-stream a trifling distance of two thousand
miles by the windings of the river, past Lake Winnipeg southward to Fort
William, the Nor' Westers' headquarters on Lake Superior.

Here the capture of Astoria was reported, and bales to the value of a
million dollars in modern money sent east in fifty canoes with an armed
guard of three hundred men.[22] Coasting along the north shore of Lake
Superior, the _voyageurs_ came to the Sault and found Mr. Johnston's
establishment a scene of smoking ruins. It was necessary to use the
greatest caution not to attract the notice of warring parties on the
Lakes.

"_Overhauled a canoe going eastward, ... a Mackinaw trader and four
Indians with a dozen fresh American scalps_," writes MacDonald, showing
to what a pass things had come. Two days later a couple of boats were
overtaken and compelled to halt by a shot from MacDonald's swivels. The
strangers proved to be the escaping crew of a British ship which had
been captured by two American schooners, and the British officer bore
bad news. The American schooners were now on the lookout for the rich
prize of furs being taken east in the North-West canoes. Slipping under
the nose of these schooners in the dark, the officer hurried to
Mackinac, leaving the Nor' Westers hidden in the mouth of French River.
William MacKay, a Nor' West partner, at once sallied out to the defence
of the furs.

Determined to catch the brigade, one schooner was hovering about the
Sault, the other cruising into the countless recesses of the north
shore. Against the latter the Mackinaw traders directed their forces,
boarding her, and, as MacDonald tells with brutal fr