NOOTKA SOUND (From an engraving in Vancouver's journal)
As the beaver had lured French bushrovers from the St. Lawrence to the Rockies, so the sea otter led the way to the exploration of the Pacific Coast. Artist's brush and novelist's pen have drawn all the romance and the glamour and the adventure of the beaver hunter's life, but the sea-otter hunter's life is almost an untold tale. Pacific Coast Indians were employed by the white traders for this wildest of hunting. The sea otter is like neither otter nor beaver, though possessing habits akin to both. In size, when full-grown, it is about the length of a man. Its pelt has the ebony shimmer of seal tipped with silver. Cradled on the waves, sleeping on their backs in the sea, playful as kittens, the sea otters only come ashore when driven by fierce gales; but they must come above to breathe, for the wave wash of storm would smother them. Their favorite sleeping grounds used to be the kelp beds of the Alaskan Islands. Storm or calm, to the kelp beds rode the Indian hunters in their boats of oiled skin light as paper. If heavy surf ran, concealing sight and sound, the hunters stood along shore shouting through the surf and waiting for the wave wash to carry in the dead body; if the sea were calm, the hunters circled in bands of twenty or thirty, spearing the sea otter as it came up to breathe; but the best hunting was when hurricane gales churned sea and air to spray. Then the sea otter came to the kelp beds in herds, and through the storm over the wave-dashed reefs, like very spirits of the storm incarnate, rushed the hunters, spear in hand. It is not surprising that the sea-otter hunters perished by tens of thousands every year, or that the sea otter dwindled from a yield of 100,000 a year to a paltry 200 of the present day.
Meanwhile Nor'west traders from Montreal and Quebec, English traders from Hudson Bay, have gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Athabasca and the Rockies. What lies beyond? Whither runs this great river from Athabasca Lake? Whence comes the great river from the mountains? Will the river that flows north or the river that comes from the west, either of them lead to the Pacific Coast, where Cook's crews found wealth of sea otter? The lure of the Unknown is the lure of the siren. First you possess it, then it possesses you! Cooped up in his fort on Lake Athabasca, Alexander MacKenzie, the Nor'wester, begins wondering about those rivers, but you can't ask business men to bank on the Unknown, to write blank checks for profits on what you may not find. And the Nor'westers were all stern business men. For every penny's outlay they exacted from their wintering partners and clerks not ten but a hundredfold. And Alexander MacKenzie received no encouragement from his company to explore these unknown rivers. The project got possession of his mind. Sometimes he would pace the little log barracks of Fort Chippewyan from sunset to day dawn, trying to work out a way to explore those rivers; or, sitting before the huge hearth place, he would dream and dream till, as he wrote his cousin Roderick, "I did not know what I was doing or where I was." Finally he induced his cousin to take charge of the fort for a summer. Then, assuming all risk and outlay, he set out on his own responsibility June 3, 1789, to follow the Great River down to the Arctic Ocean. "English Chief," who often went down to Hudson Bay for the rival company, went as MacKenzie's guide, and there were also in the canoes two or three white men, some Indians as paddlers, and squaws to cook and make moccasins.
FORT CHIPPEWYAN, ATHABASCA LAKE (From a recent photograph)
The canoes passed Peace River pouring down from the mountains; then six dangerous rapids, where many a Nor'west voyageur had perished, one of MacKenzie's canoes going smash over the falls with a squaw, who swam ashore; then rampart shores came, broader and higher than the St. Lawrence or the Hudson, the boats skimming ahead with blankets hoisted for sails through foggy days and nights of driving rain. Cramped and rain-soaked, bailing water from the canoes with huge sponges, the Indians began to whine that the way was "hard, white man, hard." Then the river lost itself in a huge lagoon, Slave Lake, named after defeated Indians who had taken refuge here; and the question was, which way to go through the fog across the marshy lake! Poking through rushes high as a man, MacKenzie found a current, and, hoisting a sail on his fishing pole, raced out to the river again on a hissing tide. Here lived the Dog Rib Indians, and they frightened MacKenzie's men cold with grewsome tales of horrors ahead, of terrible waterfalls, of a land of famine and hostile tribes. The effect was instant. MacKenzie could not obtain a guide till "English Chief" hoisted a Slave Lake Indian into the canoe on a paddle handle. Though MacKenzie himself nightly slept with the vermin-infested guide to prevent desertion, the fellow escaped one night during the confusion of a thunder-storm. Again a chance hunter was forcibly put into the canoe as guide; and the explorer pushed on for another month. North of Bear Lake, Indian warriors were seen flourishing weapons along shore, and MacKenzie's men began to remark that the land was barren of game. If they became winter bound, they would perish. MacKenzie promised his men if he did not find the sea within seven days, he would turn back. Suddenly the men lost track of day, for they had come to the region of long light. The river had widened to swamp lands. Between the 13th and 14th of July the men asleep on the sand were awakened by a flood of water lapping in on their baggage. What did it mean? For a minute they did not realize. Then they knew. It was the tide. They had found the sea. Hilarious as boys, they jumped from bed to man their canoes and chase whales.
September 12, all sails up before a driving wind, the canoes raced across Athabasca Lake to the fort landing, Roderick, his nephew, shouting a welcome. MacKenzie had laid one of the two ghosts that haunted his peace. Now he must lay the other. Where did Peace River come from? His achievement on MacKenzie River had been greeted by the other Nor'west partners with a snub. Nevertheless MacKenzie asked for leave of absence that he might go to London and study the taking of astronomic observations in order to explore that other river flowing from the mountains; and in London, though poor and obscure, he heard all about Cook's voyages and Meare's brush with the Spaniards at Nootka, and plans for Captain Vancouver to make a final exploration of the Pacific Coast. Hurrying back to the Nor'wester's fort on Peace River, he was beset by the blue devils of despondency. What if Peace River did not lead to the Pacific Ocean at all? What if he were behind some other discoverer? What if the venture proved a fool's trip leading to a blind nowhere? He was only a junior partner and could ill afford either money or time for failure.