In order not to be deserted by all of their new guides, Mackenzie was obliged to insist on one of them sharing his hut.  This young Amerindian was dressed in beaver garments which were a nest of vermin.  His hair was greased with fish oil, and his body smeared with red earth, so that at first Mackenzie thought he would never be able to sleep; but such was his fatigue that he passed a night of profound repose, and found the guide still there in the morning.  In this region he notes that the balsam fir of Canada was abundant, the tree which provided the gum that cured Cartier’s expedition of scurvy.  Some of the natives with whom they now came into contact were remarkable for their grey eyes, a feature often observed amongst the Amerindians of the North Pacific coast.

“On observing some people before us, our guides hastened to meet them, and, on their approach, one of them stepped forward with an axe in his hand.  This party consisted only of a man, two women, and the same number of children.  The eldest of the women, who probably was the man’s mother, was engaged, when we joined them, in clearing a circular spot, of about five feet in diameter, of the weeds that infested it; nor did our arrival interrupt her employment, which was sacred to the memory of the dead.  The spot to which her pious care was devoted contained the grave of a husband and a son, and whenever she passed this way she always stopped to pay this tribute of affection.”

By this time, exposure to wind and sun, the attacks of mosquitoes and flies, the difficulty of washing or of changing their clothes, had made all the Europeans of the party as dark in skin colour as the Amerindians, so that such natives as they met who had the courage to examine them, did so with the intention of discovering whether they had any white skin left.  The natives whom they now encountered (belonging to the maritime tribes) were comely in appearance, and far more cleanly than the tribes of the north-west.  As already mentioned, they had grey eyes, sometimes tinged with hazel.  Their stature was noble, one man measuring at least six feet four inches.  They were clothed in leather, and their hair was nicely combed and dressed with beads.  One of a travelling band of these Indians, finding that Mackenzie’s party was on short rations and very hungry, offered to boil them a kettle of fish roes.

“He took the roes out of a bag, and having bruised them between two stones, put them in water to soak.  His wife then took an handful of dry grass in her hand, with which she squeezed them through her fingers.  In the meantime her husband was employed in gathering wood to make a fire, for the purpose of heating stones.  When she had finished her operation, she filled a watape kettle nearly full of water, and poured the roes into it.  When the stones were sufficiently heated, some of them were put into the kettle, and others were thrown in from time to time, till the water was in a state of boiling.  The woman also