" This generally presages
change; but the day was fine, and next morning we passed what
are called the Lower Rapids, below which the banks are lined by
precipitous walls of limestone, the river narrowing to less than
half of its previous width.
Landing at Peace Point, the traditional scene of the peace between
the Beavers and the Chipewyans, or between the Beavers and the
Crees, as Mackenzie says, or all three, we found it to be a wide
and beautiful table-like prairie, begirt with aspens, on which we
flushed a pack of prairie chickens. Below it, and looking upward
beyond an island, a line of timber, fringed along the water's
edge with willows, sweeps across the view, met half-way by a wall
of Devonian rock, whose alternate glitter and shade, in the strong
sunshine streaming from the east, seemed almost spectral.
The heavily timbered island added to the effect, and, with a patch
of limestone on its cheek, formed a strikingly beautiful foreground.
The only exciting incident of the day was the vigorous chase, by some
of the party, of an old pair of moulting gray geese with their young,
all, of course, unable to fly. It was pitiful to watch the clever
and fearless actions of the old birds as decoys, falling victims,
at last, to parental love. Indeed, they were not worth eating, and
to kill them was a sin. But when were there ever scruples over
food on Peace River, that theatre of mighty feats of gormandism?
I have already hinted at those masterpieces of voracity for which
the region is renowned; yet the undoubted facts related around our
camp-fires, and otherwise, a few of which follow, almost beggar
belief.
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