[Illustration: Running a Rapid on Mackenzie River.]
Mackenzie spent the long winter at Fort Chipewyan; but just as soon as the rivers cleared of ice, he took passage in the east-bound canoes and hurried down to the Grand Portage or Fort William on Lake Superior, the headquarters of the Northwest Company, where he reported his discovery of Mackenzie River. His report was received with utter indifference. The company had other matters to think about. It was girding itself for the life-and-death struggle with its rival, the Hudson's Bay Company. "My expedition was hardly spoken of, but that is what I expected," he writes to his cousin. But chagrin did not deter purpose. He asked the directors' permission to explore that other broad stream—Peace River—rolling down from the mountains. His request was granted. Winter saw him on furlough in England, studying astronomy and surveying for the next expedition. Here he heard much of the Western Sea—the Pacific—that fired his eagerness. The voyages of Cook and Hanna and Meares were on everybody's lips. Spain and England and Russia were each pushing for first possession of the northwest coast. Mackenzie hurried back to his Company's fort on the banks of Peace River, where he spent a restless winter waiting for navigation to open. Doubts of his own ambitions began to trouble him. What if Peace River did not lead to the west coast at all? What if he were behind some other discoverer sent out by the Spaniards or the Russians? "I have been so vexed of late that I cannot sit down to anything steadily," he confesses in a letter to his cousin. Such a tissue-paper wall separates the aims of the real hero from those of the fool, that almost every ambitious man must pass through these periods of self-doubt before reaching the goal of his hopes. But despondency did not benumb Mackenzie into apathy, as it has weaker men.
By April he had shipped the year's furs from the forks of Peace River to Chipewyan. By May his season's work was done. He was ready to go up Peace River. A birch canoe thirty feet long, lined with lightest of cedar, was built. In this were stored pemmican and powder. Alexander Mackay, a clerk of the company, was chosen as first assistant. Six Canadian voyageurs—two of whom had accompanied Mackenzie to the Arctic—and two Indian hunters made up the party of ten who stepped into the canoes at seven in the evening of May 9, 1793.
Peace River tore down from the mountains flooded with spring thaw. The crew soon realized that paddles must be bent against the current of a veritable mill-race; but it was safer going against, than with, such a current, for unknown dangers could be seen from below instead of above, where suction would whirl a canoe on the rocks. Keen air foretold the nearing mountains. In less than a week snow-capped peaks had crowded the canoe in a narrow cañon below a tumbling cascade where the river was one wild sheet of tossing foam as far as eye could see. The difficulty was to land; for precipices rose on each side in a wall, down which rolled enormous boulders and land-slides of loose earth. To portage goods up these walls was impossible. Fastening an eighty-foot tow-line to the bow, Mackenzie leaped to the declivity, axe in hand, cut foothold along the face of the steep cliff to a place where he could jump to level rock, and then, turning, signalled through the roar of the rapids for his men to come on. The voyageurs were paralyzed with fear. They stripped themselves ready to swim if they missed the jump, then one by one vaulted from foothold to foothold where Mackenzie had cut till they came to the final jump across water. Here Mackenzie caught each on his shoulders as the voyageurs leaped. The tow-line was then passed round trees growing on the edge of the precipice, and the canoe tracked up the raging cascade. The waves almost lashed the frail craft to pieces. Once a wave caught her sideways; the tow-line snapped like a pistol shot, for just one instant the canoe hung poised, and then the back-wash of an enormous boulder drove her bow foremost ashore, where the voyageurs regained the tow-line.
[Illustration: Slave Lake Indians.]
The men had not bargained on this kind of work. They bluntly declared that it was absurd trying to go up cañons with such cascades. Mackenzie paid no heed to the murmurings. He got his crew to the top of the hill, spread out the best of a regale—including tea sweetened with sugar—and while the men were stimulating courage by a feast, he went ahead to reconnoitre the gorge. Windfalls of enormous spruce trees, with a thickness twice the height of a man, lay on a steep declivity of sliding rock. Up this climbed Mackenzie, clothes torn to tatters by devil's club (a thorn bush with spines like needles), boots hacked to pieces by the sharp rocks, and feet gashed with cuts. The prospect was not bright. As far as he could see the river was one succession of cataracts fifty feet wide walled in by stupendous precipices, down which rolled great boulders, shattering to pebbles as they fell. The men were right. No canoe could go up that stream. Mackenzie came back, set his men to repairing the canoe and making axe handles, to avoid the idleness that breeds mutiny, and sent Mackay ahead to see how far the rapids extended. Mackay reported that the portage would be nine miles over the mountain.
Leading the way, axe in hand, Mackenzie began felling trees so that the trunks formed an outer railing to prevent a fall down the precipice. Up this trail they warped the canoe by pulling the tow-line round stumps, five men going in advance to cut the way, five hauling and pushing the canoe. In one day progress was three miles. By five in the afternoon the men were so exhausted that they went to bed—if bare ground with sky overhead could be called bed. One thing alone encouraged them: as they rose higher up the mountain side, they saw that the green edges of the glaciers and the eternal snows projected over the precipices. They were nearing the summit—they must surely soon cross the Divide. The air grew colder. For three days the choppers worked in their blanket coats. When they finally got the canoe down to the river-bed, it was to see another range of impassable mountains barring the way westward. All that kept Mackenzie's men from turning back was that awful portage of nine miles. Nothing ahead could be worse than what lay behind; so they embarked, following the south branch where the river forked. The stream was swift as a cascade. Half the crew walked to lighten the canoe and prevent grazing on the rocky bottoms.
Once, at dusk, when walkers and paddlers happened to have camped on opposite shores, the marchers came dashing across stream, wading neck-high, with news that they had heard the firearms of Indian raiders. Fires were put out, muskets loaded, and each man took his station at the foot of a tree, where all passed a sleepless night. No hostiles appeared. The noise was probably falling avalanches. And once when Mackenzie and Mackay had gone ahead with the Indian interpreters, they came back to find that the canoe had disappeared. In vain they kindled fires, fired guns, set branches adrift on the swift current as a signal—no response came from the voyageurs. The boatmen evidently did not wish to be found. What Mackenzie's suspicions were one may guess. It would be easier for the crew to float back down Peace River than pull against this terrific current with more portages over mountains. The Indians became so alarmed that they wanted to build a raft forthwith and float back to Chipewyan. The abandoned party had not tasted a bite of food for twenty-four hours. They had not even seen a grouse, and in their powder horns were only a few rounds of ammunition. Separating, Mackenzie and his Indian went up-stream, Mackay and his went down-stream, each agreeing to signal the other by gunshots if either found the canoe. Barefooted and drenched in a terrific thunderstorm, Mackenzie wandered on till darkness shrouded the forest. He had just lain down on a soaking couch of spruce boughs when the ricochetting echo of a gun set the boulders crashing down the precipices. Hurrying down-stream, he found Mackay at the canoe. The crew pretended that a leakage about the keel had caused delay; but the canoe did not substantiate the excuse. Mackenzie said nothing; but he never again allowed the crew out of his sight on the east side of the mountains.