Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/84

 from these incoherent descriptions of places, rivers, mountains and marshes, reckon that he could reach the great river, which he at once supposed to be Carver's Oregon, in ten or twelve days, and from the great river reach the sea coast in a month. Mackenzie got the Indian that told him the story to draw a map on a piece of birch bark, which proved to be a very good map of the region to be traversed. The Indian made the river run into an arm of the sea, and not into the great ocean. Mackenzie was sure the Indian was either mistaken or deceiving him. But he was doing neither. Mackenzie did not know of the existence of Eraser river. He did not know of Gray 's discovery of the Columbia, but he did know of Carver's reported account of the "Oregon River of the West," running directly into the ocean, and this was the only great river he supposed could exist on the west slope of the Rocky mountains. He recalled Carver's statement that he had "learned that the foremost capital rivers on the continent of North America, viz. the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the river Bourbon and the Oregon or the River of the West have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is rather further west." And thus from these mere glimmerings of geography assuming what from this "Height of Land" flowed four great rivers, one the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, another south into the California sea, another north into the icy sea, and the fourth west into the Pacific. Mackenzie had been down the north river to the icy sea, and he was sure he would now go west to the "Oregon River," and find his Indian map-maker mistaken.

On the 12th of June, 1793, MacKenzie crossed the narrow divide of the Rocky mountains and found it only eight hundred and seventeen paces (about half a mile) between the head waters of Peace river and the head waters of the Eraser. From there on to the Eraser the stream was a succession of torrents, cascades and little lakes, making traveling very bad. But not a word was said about turning back. The voyagers had imbibed some of the spirit of the intrepid and irresistible leader as well as much of the spirit they carefully packed from one portage to another as a most precious treasure; and on the 17th day of June, 1793, after cutting a passage through driftwood and underbrush for a mile, and dragging their canoe and goods through a swamp, they landed on the margin of the Fraser river of British Columbia. Simon Eraser, for whom the river was named, after this route had been opened by Mackenzie, afterwards passed over it and pronounced it the worst piece of forest traveling in North America. We here include a copy of the map the explorer made of this region, which not only shows by the dotted line his course from the Fraser river across to Salmon bay on the Straits of Georgia, but shows that Mackenzie did not follow the Eraser to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia or he would not have dotted in the lower course of the river as entering the ocean down by our Saddle mountain near Astoria. But this mistake, arising wholly from making a short cut across the land to the ocean instead of following the river to its mouth, was confirmed by Lewis and Clark, who also supposed that Mackenzie had been upon the upper waters of the Columbia. Simon Eraser made the same mistake when he saw the Eraser, and remained thus mistaken until 1808, when he followed the river down to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia, three hundred miles north of the mouth of the Columbia.