Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/79

 on the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean and then returned. And there may have been others. We have authentic history to prove that Sacajawea (the bird-woman of the Lewis and Clark expedition) crossed the mountains from the valley of the Snake river to the Mississippi, and remembered the country well enough to guide that expedition back over the same route. But explorations of this kind prove nothing to our purpose—the development of the country.

We now come to the first white man that ever crossed the Rocky mountains from the east to the west for a great purpose, and set foot on the shores of the Pacific ocean. He was neither French, English nor American—but Scotch, and Alexander Mackenzie was his name. He was a native of Inverness, knighted by George III. for distinguished services, migrated to Canada, and entered the service of a fur trader in the year 1779, while yet a young man, and while the British were in the midst of their fight with Washington and his rebels. This Scotchman possessed every qualification to make him a successful leader and governor of men; a fine mind, clear head, strong, muscular body, lithe and active, great resolution, invincible courage, tireless and patient energy, with the capacity to comprehend and manage all sorts and conditions of men. Remaining in the fur trade for five years as a hired man, saving his wages, and, biding his time, he cut loose for himself, and became a partner in the great Northwest Company, which to distinguish it from others, was known as the Canada company, for many years the most prosperous and aggressive of all the fur traders.

The great interior of northwest America was at that time but little known. In fact, nothing was known of this vast region beyond the incomprehensible accounts of roving Indians and the meagre reports of adventuresome trappers. It was just such a state of incomprehension and imperfect knowledge of a vast country filled with great riches, as appealed to the keen apprehension and profound mind of Alexander Mackenzie, and he resolved to find out the great secrets which the boundless forests beyond Canada contained. To prepare himself for this self-appointed task, he studied astronomy enough to find his way in untraveled regions by the guidance of the stars, and to take care of himself and men in all sorts and conditions of circumstances in distant explorations by land.

The trappers and fur traders had gradually worked west and north from the upper end of Lake Superior until they had reached the western end of Lake Athabasca, where Peace river, coming west from an opening in the Rocky mountains, discharges its waters into channels which carry it to the Arctic ocean. Mackenzie knew that up to that point, clear back to the Mississippi, there was no Strait of Anian, or water course from the east side of the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean, and that if he would follow that water, then running due north, it would take him either into the great frozen sea of the north, in which ease he would find the Strait of Anian if there was one, or the water would turn west at some point short of the Arctic sea, and carry him to the Pacific. So, that with a birch bark canoe, four Canadians (two with their wives) and two smaller canoes with English Chief, an Indian, and his family, and followers of Mackenzie, set out on June 3, 1789, to float down with the current of Great Slave