“Well, all the fur-traders used to come in here, at least before they had studied out this country very closely. You see, they didn’t have any maps—they were the ones who made the first maps. Mackenzie was the first over, and he did it all by himself, without any kind of map to help him.”
“Yes, and when he got over this far he was in an awful fix,” said John. “I remember where it says his men were going to leave him and go back down the Peace River to the east. He wasn’t sure his guide was going to stick to him until he got over to the Fraser, west of here.”
“Yes,” said Rob, “and there wasn’t any Fraser River known by that name at that time. They all thought it was the Columbia River, which it wasn’t by a long way. But Sir Alexander stuck it out, don’t you see. He was a great man, or he couldn’t have done it. I take off my hat to him, that’s what I do.”
And in his enthusiasm, Rob did take off his hat, and his young companions joined him, their eyes lighting with enthusiasm for the man the simple story of whose deeds had stirred their young blood.
Alex looked on approvingly. “He was of my family,” said he. “Perhaps my great-grandfather—I don’t know. He was a good man in the woods. You see, he went far to the north before he came here—he followed the Mackenzie River to its mouth in the Arctic Sea. Then he thought there must be a way across to the Pacific. Some one told him about the Peace River. That’s how he came to make the first trip over the mountains here. By rights the Fraser River ought to have been named after him, too, because he was the first to see it.”
“But he wasn’t the first to run it on out,” said John, who also had a good idea of the geography hereabouts, which he had carefully studied in advance. “It was Simon Fraser did that first.”
“Yes, they’ll both been good man, heem,” said Moise, his mouth full of bacon. “My wife, she’ll had an onkle once name Fraser an’ he’ll been seex feet high an’ strong like a hox—those Fraser, yes, heem.”
“They must have been strong men,” said Alex, “and brave men as well.”
“Their worst time was getting west of here, wasn’t it?” asked John.
“Yes,” answered Rob. “The book says that when they tried to get down the Fraser they had a terrible time. Sometimes they had to carry their canoe through swamps and over hills. No wonder the men mutinied. Why, they lost all their bullets, and got everything they had wet. The men almost lost heart.”