On the 3d June, 1789, our hero embarked in a native canoe on the Slave River, and following its course, then unimpeded by ice, in a northerly direction, he arrived on the 9th of the same month at the Slave Lake. Skirting along its shores in a westerly direction, he presently discovered the important river bearing his name, which has since been found to be identical with the Athabasca, rising in the Rocky Mountains near Mount Brown, and also with the Slave, the combined waters of the two streams flowing, after their junction, to the Arctic Ocean in Mackenzie Bay, N. lat. 70°, W. long. 136°.
Anxious to trace the course of the Mackenzie, the explorer was about to proceed along it in his canoe, when he was told by some wandering Indians that certain death would be the result, for the bed of the stream was haunted by huge monsters, who would devour all who came in their way. Moreover, it would take many years to reach the salt water. The white man had better return the way he came. In any case, he could hope for no help from the redskins.
Though these terrible prophecies did not affect Mackenzie himself, they paralyzed his guides, who declared they would go no further; and after trying alike persuasion and force, the Europeans determined to do the best they could alone. They appear to have penetrated as far north as the Great Bear Lake, but here, for some reason of which we find no explanation in Mackenzie’s journal, the canoe was turned southward, and the voyage back to the Slave Lake resumed. “My people,” says Mackenzie, “could not refrain from some expressions of real concern that they were obliged to return without reaching the sea;” but he apparently made no great effort to gratify them.
Back again to Fort Chipewyan, Mackenzie lost no time in preparing for a second journey of discovery. Embarking on the Peace River, a tributary of the Slave or Athabasca, he followed its course in a south-westerly direction, till he reached the first spurs of the snow-clad Rocky Mountains, whence issued the river under examination. Here the canoe was, of necessity, abandoned, and an arduous climb began, resulting, however, in the successful scaling of the rugged ridge, and the safe arrival at a village on its western side, where the weary travelers were regaled with salmon, a fish never before met with on their travels in North America.
MACKENZIE’S FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
The inhabitants of this remote home in the wilderness were of a far more civilized appearance than the Indians of the East; and as the sea was approached by the explorers, they passed through settlements numbering hundreds of well-built houses, peopled by various tribes belonging to the southern branches of the great hyperborean group. Members of the Sicannis and other Rocky Mountain families were met with, who, one and all, showed courtesy to the white strangers, though they were jealous of any interference with their fishing or hunting; and as the western coast was approached, the active and intelligent Thinkleets, chiefly of the Stikeen and Tungass tribes, excited the admiration of their visitors by their ingenuity in the construction of domestic and other implements, and their skill in painting and carving.
The shores of the North Pacific Ocean were finally reached in north latitude 52° 20′ 48″. The whole of the continent of British America had for the first time been traversed; its vast breadth had been proved beyond a doubt; and the connecting link between the discoveries on the western coast and those from the East, whether from Hudson’s Bay, New England, or the Southern States, was added at last. Yet in Mackenzie’s account of his work he scarcely notes the first sight of the sea; we have searched in vain for any details of his sojourn on its shores. Having done what he came to do, he turned back, and retraced his steps, winding up the [♦]narrative of his adventures with this simple and unostentatious sentence:—“After an absence of eleven months I arrived at Fort Chipewyan, where I remained for the purposes of trade during the succeeding winter.”
[♦] ‘narative’ replaced with ‘narrative’