Wild parsnips grew here in abundance, and were a grateful addition to the diet of the travellers.

As to birds, they not only saw blue jays and yellow birds, but the first humming bird which Mackenzie had ever beheld in the north-west.[8] [Footnote 7: Mr.Burpee points out that this was really the southernmost source of the mighty congeries of streams which flowed northwards to form the Mackenzie River system.

Having traced the Mackenzie to the sea, its discoverer now stood four years afterwards at its most remote source, 2420 miles from its mouth at which he had seen the ice floes and the whales.] [Footnote 8: Humming birds arrive annually in British Columbia between April and May, and stay there till the autumn.

They winter in the warmer parts of California.] From this tiny lake he made his way over lofty mountains to another lake at no great distance, and from this a small stream called the Bad River flowed southwards to join a still bigger stream, which Mackenzie thought might prove to be one of the branches of the mighty Columbia River that flows out into the Pacific through the State of Oregon.

It really was the Fraser River, and of the upper waters of the Fraser Mackenzie was the discoverer.[9] [Footnote 9: The great surveyor and map maker, David Thompson, was the first white man to reach the upper waters of the _Columbia_ River.