MACKENZIE RIVER.

MAP OF MACKENZIE RIVER AND THE YUKON.
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Northward the course of the fur traders' empire has continually made its way. Leaving Great Slave Lake four years before the close of the eighteenth century, along the course of Alexander Mackenzie's earlier exploration, Duncan Livingston, a North-West Company trader, built the first fort on the river eighty miles north of the lake. Three years later the trader, his three French-Canadian voyageurs and Indian interpreter, were basely killed by the Eskimos on the Lower Mackenzie River. A year or two afterward a party of fur traders, under John Clark, started on an expedition of exploration and retaliation down the river, but again the fury of the Eskimos was roused. In truth, had it not been for a storm of fair wind which favoured them, the traders would not have escaped with their lives.

Very early in the present century, Fort Simpson, the former and present headquarters of the extensive Mackenzie River district, was built, and very soon after its establishment the prominent trader, and afterwards Chief Factor, George Keith, is found in charge of it. It is still the great trading and Church of England Mission centre of the vast region reaching to the Arctic Sea.

During the first half of the century, Big Island, at the point where the Mackenzie River leaves Great Slave Lake, was, on account of its good supply of white fish, the wintering station for the supernumerary district servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. Though this point is still visited for fishing in the autumn, yet in later years the trade of this post has been transferred to another built near the Roman Catholic Mission at Fort Providence, forty miles farther down the river. On Hay River, near the point of departure of the Mackenzie River from the lake, several forts have been built from time to time and abandoned, among them a Fort George referred to by the old traders. The eastern end of the lake, known as Fond du Lac, became celebrated, as we have already seen, in connection with the Arctic explorers, Sir George Back and Dr. Richard King, for here they built Fort Reliance and wintered, going in the spring to explore the Great Fish River. In after years, on account of the district being the resort for the herds of cariboo, Fort Reliance was rebuilt, and was for a time kept up as an outpost of Fort Resolution for collecting furs and "country provisions." It may be re-occupied soon on account of the discoveries of gold and copper in the region.

Journeying down the Mackenzie River, we learn that there was a fur traders' post of the Montreal merchants sixty miles north of Fort Simpson. In all probability this was but one of several posts that were from time to time occupied in that locality. At the beginning of the century the North-West Company pushed on further north, and had a trading post on the shore of Great Bear Lake, but almost immediately on its erection they were met here by their rivals, the X Y Company. At this point, reached by going up the Bear River from its junction with the Mackenzie on the south-west arm of the lake, Chief Factor Peter Dease built Fort Franklin for the use of the great Arctic explorer, after whom he named the fort.

FORT NORMAN, ON THE MACKENZIE.

To explore new ground was a burning desire in the breasts of the Nor'-Westers. Immediately in the year of their reunion with the X Y Company, the united North-West Company established a post on the Mackenzie River, sixty miles north of the mouth of Bear River. Indeed, the mouth of Bear River on the Mackenzie seems to have suggested itself as a suitable point for a post to be built, for in 1810 Fort Norman had been first placed there. For some reason the post was moved thirty or forty miles higher up the river, but a jam of ice having occurred in the spring of 1851, the fort was mainly swept away by the high water, though the occupants and all the goods were saved. In the same year the mouth of the Bear River came into favour again, and Fort Norman was built at that point. After this time the fort was moved once or twice, but was finally placed in its present commanding position. It was in quite recent times that, under Chief Factor Camsell's direction, a station half-way between Fort Norman and Fort Simpson was fixed and the name of Fort Wrigley given to it.