and welcomed as allies by the
Crees, with whom, as Dr. Richardson says, "they attacked and
drove to the westward the former inhabitants of the banks of the
Saskatchewan." "The nations," he continues, "driven westward by
the Easeabs and Crees are termed by the latter Yatchee-thinyoowuc,
translated Slave Indians, but properly 'Strangers.'" This word
Yatchee is, of course, the Iyaghchi of the Crees in their name for
Lesser Slave River and Lake. Richardson describes them as inhabiting
the country round Fort Augustus and the foot of the Rockies, and "so
numerous now as to be a terror to the Assiniboines themselves." They
are divided, he says, into five nations, of whom the Fall Indians,
so called from their former residence at Cole's Falls, near the
Forks of the Saskatchewan, were the most numerous, consisting of 500
tents, the Piegans of 400, the Blackfeet of 350, the Bloods of 300,
and the Sarcees of 150, the latter tribe being a branch of the
Chipewyans which, having migrated like their congeners, the Apaches,
from the north, joined the Crees as allies, just as the Assiniboines
did from the south.]

Besides Mackenzie's, another name, renowned in the tragic annals of
science, is inseparably connected with this region, viz., that of
Franklin, who has already been incidentally referred to. Others
recur to one, but these two great names are engrained, so to
speak, in the North, and cannot be lightly passed over in any
descriptive work. The two explorers were friends, or, at any rate,
acquaintances; and, before leaving England, Franklin had a long
conversation in London with Mackenzie, who died shortly afterwards.
The record of his "Journey to the Shores of the Polar Ocean,"
accompanied by Doctor Richardson and Midshipmen Back and Hood, in
the years 1819-20-21 and '22, practically began at York Factory in
August of the former year. The rival companies were still at war,
and in making the portage at the Grand Rapids of the Saskatchewan,
with a party of Hudson's Bay Company traders, "they advanced," he
says, "armed, and with great caution." When he returned on the 14th
July, 1822, to York, the warring companies had united, and he and
his friends were met there by Governor Simpson, Mr. McTavish, and
all the united partners, after a voyage by water and land of over
5,500 miles. Franklin spent part of the winter at Cumberland post,
which had been founded to counteract the rivalry of Montreal.
"Before that time," he says, "the nat