n 1792, when the Russians were pressing down from their
Alaskan posts, when the Spaniards, claiming the Pacific for their own,
were exploring the mouth of the Fraser, when Captain Robert Gray of
Boston was sailing up the mighty Columbia, and Captain Vancouver
was charting the northern coasts for the British Government, a young
North-West Company factor, Alexander Mackenzie, in his lonely post on
Lake Athabaska, was planning to cross the wilderness of mountains to
the coast. With a fellow trader, Mackay, and six Canadian voyageurs, he
pushed up the Peace and the Parsnip, passed by way of the Fraser and
the Blackwater to the Bella Coola, and thence to the Pacific, the first
white man to cross the northern continent. Paddling for life through
swirling rapids on rivers which rushed madly through sheer rock-bound
canyons, swimming for shore when rock or sand bar had wrecked the
precious bark canoe, struggling over heartbreaking portages, clinging
to the sides of precipices, contending against hostile Indians and
fear-stricken followers, and at last winning through, Mackenzie summed
up what will ever remain one of the great achievements of exploration
in the simple record, painted in vermilion on a rock in Burke Channel:
Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July,
one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three. The first bond had been
woven in the union of East and West. Between the eastern provinces a
stronger link was soon to be forged. The War of 1812 gave the scattered
British colonies in America for the first time a living sense of unity
that transcended all differences, a memory of perils and of victories
which nourished a common patriotism.

The War of 1812 was no quarrel of Canada's. It was merely an incident
in the struggle between England and Napoleon. At desperate grips, both
contestants used whatever weapons lay ready to their hands. Sea power
was England's weapon, and in her claim to forbid all neutral traffic
with her enemies and to exercise the galling right of search, she
pressed it far. France trampled still more ruthlessly on American and
neutral rights; but, with memories of 1776 still fresh, the dominant
party in the United States was disposed to forgive France and to hold
England to strict account.

England had struck at France, regardless of how the blow might injure
neutrals. Now the United States sought to strike at England through the
colonies, regardless of their lack of any r