As its course was very crooked much time was spent in examining the different rapids previous to running them, but the canoes descended, except at a single place, without any difficulty.

Most of the officers and half the men marched along the land to lighten the canoes and reconnoitre the country, each person being armed with a gun and a dagger.

Arriving at a range of mountains which had terminated our view yesterday, we ascended it with much eagerness, expecting to see the rapid that Mr.Hearne visited near its base, and to gain a view of the sea; but our disappointment was proportionably great when we beheld beyond a plain, similar to that we had just left, terminated by another range of trap hills, between whose tops the summits of some distant blue mountains appeared.

Our reliance on the information of the guides, which had been for some time shaken, was now quite at an end, and we feared that the sea was still far distant.

The flat country here is covered with grass and is devoid of the large stones so frequent in the barren grounds, but the ranges of trap hills which seem to intersect it at regular distances are quite barren.