The women, on the other hand, usually wore their hair short.  Mackenzie noticed that the infants had their heads enclosed with boards covered with leather, to press the skull into the shape of a wedge.  The women wore a fringed apron, and over that a long robe made of skins or leather, either loose or tied round the middle with a girdle.  Over these in wet weather was worn a cap in the shape of an inverted bowl or dish.  The men also wore this cap, and in cold weather used the robe, but in warm weather went about in no clothing at all, except that their feet were protected with shoes made of dressed elks’ skins.  In wet weather, over their robe they wore a circular mat with an opening in the middle sufficiently large to admit the head.  This, spreading over the shoulders, threw off the wet.  As compared with the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, the men and boys were very cleanly, being constantly in the water.  The women, however, were dirty.

At the end of July, 1793, Mackenzie left what he calls the Friendly Village, and prepared to return to the east across the Rocky Mountains, having distributed to each man about twenty pounds weight of smoked salmon, flour, and pemmican.  The fatigue of ascending the precipices of the mountains was past description.  When they arrived at a spot where water could be obtained, and a camp made, they were in such an extremity of weariness they could hardly crawl about to gather wood for the purpose of making a fire; but two hours afterwards the Amerindians of their party arrived and came to their assistance.  Then when they were sitting round a blazing fire, and some of their fatigue had lessened, they could sit and talk of past dangers, and indulge in the delightful reflection that they were thus far advanced on their homeward journey.  “Nor was it possible to be in this situation without contemplating the wonders of it.  Such was the depth of the precipices below, and the height of the mountains above, with the rude and wild magnificence of the scenery around, that I shall not attempt to describe such an astonishing and awful combination of objects....  Even at this place, which is only, as it were, the first step towards gaining the summit of the mountains, the climate was very sensibly changed.  The air that fanned the village which we left at noon, was mild and cheering; the grass was verdant, and the wild fruits ripe around it.  But here the snow was not yet dissolved, the ground was still bound by the frost, the herbage had scarce begun to spring, and the crowberry bushes were just beginning to blossom.”

Eventually they found their canoe, and the property which they had left behind, in perfect safety.  At this camp, where the canoe had been left behind, many natives arrived both from the upper and lower parts of the river, all of them dressed in beaver robes, which they were ready enough to sell for large knives.  It struck Alexander Mackenzie as being very extraordinary that these people, who had left