Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/80



river into Great Slave lake, and thence on down, down, north, wherever the waters took them, until they had solved the great mystery of the unknown Arc- tie. Passing from one lake to another, hunting, fishing, trapping as they went, the adventurous party finally in the month of July, found themselves in the Arctic ocean, where they chased the whales and paddled around miles and miles of icebergs, iinder a starless sky, and a never setting summer sun. This expedition was one of the most important in the annals of discovery. Mac- kenzie had proved the non-existence of the Strait of Anian, and established the fact for all time that no such passageway across the continent existed, and found that the watershed to the north was wholly separate from the waterished to the west. They had suffered no hardships or hairbreadth escapes, and they found a great waterway to the north in the same month that Captain Robert Gray had sailed through the Straits of Fuca for the first time, two thousand miles' to the southwest.

After an absence of one hundred days, Mackenzie returned with his party to his starting point, loaded with fine furs and having found both coal and iron ore at Great Bear Lake. Mackenzie was not satisfied with his first venture, regarding as something of a failure that which was in fact a great success. He had penetrated the mystery to the north, and put an end to the quest for the Strait of Anian which the sea captains had believed in and vainly sought to find for nearly three hundred years. It was one more dark corner of the mystery which enshrouded the Oregon country cleared up. And we see how the enlight- ening agencies of exploration and discovery were gradually creeping in on the core of the mysterious region, "Where rolls the Oregon."

But Mackenzie was not satisfied. Such a man is never satisfied as long as there are other regions to explore and other obstacles to overcome, and other duties to be performed. Three years after this trip to the north we find him again at the old starting point at the mouth of Peace river. But this time in- stead of floating down with the water, he resolved to go up stream, follow the river to its fountainhead and find, if possible, a pass through the Rocky moun- tains, and a stream on the west side that would carry him down to the Pacific ocean as had Peace river and his own Mackenzie carried him to the Arctic ocean. And so on the 10th day of October, 1792, five months after Captain Gray had found and entered the Columbia river. Mackenzie starts westward for an exploration to find this river. In ten days Mackenzie had reached the most western post of the Northwest Company at the base of the Rocky mountains. Here the natives and trappers received their big chief with great eclat amidst the firing of guns and general rejoicing of the people ; and many was the bottle of good old Scotch emptied on that auspicious occasion. There were three hundred natives and sixty professional trappers and hunters congre- gated there. Mackenzie not only treated them liberally to rum and tobacco, but he preached them a good sermon as to the proper manner they should de- mean themselves for their own good and that of the white man. From this point Mackenzie kept on west for sixty miles until he reached the point named Fort York, and to which men had been sent the previous sprina; to prepare the ground and timbers for a new post, which was to be their winter quarters previous to their last plunge into the wilderness over the mountains and down to the Pa- cific ocean the next spring. This Fort York came to be called York factory un-