I could not well do
without them, I was at length obliged to sooth it and induce the chief
to change his resolution (to leave me), which he did with great
apparent reluctance."

Later on English Chief told Mackenzie that he feared he might have to
go to war, because it was a custom amongst the Athapaskan chiefs to
make war after they had given way to the disgrace attached to such a
feminine weakness as shedding tears. Therefore he would undertake a
warlike expedition in the following spring, but in the meantime he
would continue with Mackenzie as long as he wanted him.

Mackenzie, rejoining Le Roux at the Slave Lake, safely reached his
station at Fort Chipewayan on September 12, 1789, just as the approach
of winter was making travel in these northern regions dangerous to
those who relied on unfrozen water as a means of transit.

Mackenzie seems to have been a little disappointed with the results
of his northward journey; perhaps he had thought that the outlet of
Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River would be into the Pacific, the _Mer
de l'Ouest_ of his Canadian _voyageurs_. Yet he must have realized
that he had discovered something very wonderful after all: the
beginning of Alaska, the approach to a region which, though lying
within the Arctic circle, has climatic conditions permitting the
existence of trees, abundant vegetation, and large, strange beasts,
and which, moreover, is highly mineralized. His work in this
direction, however (and that of Hearne), was to be completed in the
next century by SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, SIR GEORGE BACK, SIR JOHN
RICHARDSON, and SIR JOHN ROSS--all knighthoods earned by magnificent
services in geographical exploration--and by THOMAS SIMPSON, Dr. John
Rae,[3] WARREN DEASE, JOHN M'LEOD, ROBERT CAMPBELL, and other servants
of the Hudson's Bay Company.

[Footnote 3: See p. 125.]

In October, 1792, Mackenzie had determined to make a great attempt to
reach the Pacific Ocean. By this time he and his colleagues had
explored the Peace River (the main tributary of Slave Lake), and had
realized that they could travel up it into the heart of the Rocky
Mountains. He wintered and traded at a place which he called "New
Establishment", on the banks of the Peace River, near the foothills of
the Rocky Mountains. He left this station on May 9, 1793, accompanied
by ALEXANDER MACKAY,[4] six French Canadians, and two Indian guides.
They travelled up the Peace River in a twenty-five-foot canoe, and at
first p