It was empty! When it is remembered that, in the old
buffalo days, the daily ration per head at the Company's prairie
posts was eight pounds of fresh meat, which was all eaten, its
equivalent being two pounds of pemmican, the enormity of this
Gargantuan feast may be imagined. But we ourselves were not bad
hands at the trencher. In fact, we were always hungry. So I do not
reproduce the foregoing facts as a reproach, but rather as a meagre
tribute to the prowess of the great of old--the men of unbounded
stomach!
On the afternoon of the 4th we rounded Point Providence, the soil
exposures sandy, the timber dense but slender, and early next
morning reached the Quatre Fourches, which was at that time flowing
into Lake Athabasca. It is simply a waterway of some thirty miles
in length, which connects Peace River with the lake, and resembles,
in size and colour, Red River in Manitoba. It is one of "the
rivers that turn"--so called from their reversing their current
at different stages of water. A small stream of this kind connects
the South Saskatchewan with the Qu'Appelle, and another, a navigable
river, the Lower Saskatchewan with Cumberland Lake. The Quatre
Fourches is thus both an inlet and an outlet, but not of the lake
in a right sense. The real outlet is the Rocher River, which joins
the Peace River at the intersection of latitude 59 with the 111.30th
degree of longitude, beyond which the united streams are called
the Great Slave River.
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