Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/24

Rh he painted this simple memorial: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three." The record has long since disappeared, but the name of Alexander Mackenzie, the indomitable explorer, lives and will always live in the history of Canada.

Following in the footsteps of Mackenzie, another explorer, Simon Fraser, crossed the mountains and descended the river that now bears his name. The appalling difficulties of the journey would have frightened any less heroic heart. His men threatened to desert him. They urged him to avoid the almost impassable canyon by crossing overland to the Thompson river, but he replied simply that his orders were to explore the Fraser to the sea, and he would do that or die in the attempt. He succeeded, where many another would have failed.

From the days of Mackenzie and Fraser, the Rocky mountains have been penetrated time and again by explorers, fur-traders and travellers, from David Thompson, Alexander Henry, Gabriel Franchère, Ross Cox, Daniel Harmon, and Alexander Ross, to Sir George Simpson, Sir James Douglas, Paul Kane, the Earl of Southesk, Dr. James Hector, Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle. All the earlier explorers were associated either with the North-West Company or with the greater company into which it was merged, the Hudson's Bay Company, whose vast commercial enterprises are recognized to have played an exceedingly important part in retaining our western territory within the limits of British North America.

The days when the fur-trader ruled an empire larger than all Europe have gone by. His realm is now in a different sphere. The railway has to a large extent taken the place of his brigade of prairie carts, his bark canoe or dog-sled. Many changes have occurred under my own eyes during the more than a