Moreover, each of the Canadians carried a gun.

The Amerindian servants of the expedition were only asked to carry loads of forty-five pounds in weight.
Mackenzie's pack, and that of his companion, Mackay, amounted to about seventy pounds.

Loaded like this they had to scramble up the wooded mountains, first soaked in perspiration from the heat and then drenched with heavy rain.

Nevertheless they walked for about thirteen miles the first day.

Now they began to meet natives who were closely in touch with the seacoast, which lay to the west at a distance of about six days' journey.
"We had no sooner laid ourselves down to rest last night than the natives began to sing, in a manner very different from what I had been accustomed to hear among savages.