ngularly interesting people among whom Lewis and Clark
spent the winter sixty-six years later. But, having been robbed of the
presents which he had provided, he was unable to get a guide to lead
him further and was obliged to return. The journey was made in
midwinter and was full of frightful hardships.

His eldest surviving son, Pierre de la Verendrye, full of his father's
spirit, devoted himself to the same quest. He had with him his brother
and two other men. They started from Fort La Reine, reached the
Mandans, and pushed on to the West. All through the summer, autumn,
and early winter they toiled on, going hither and yon, beguiled by the
usual fairy-tales of tribesmen. {318} At last, on New Year's day,
1743, two hundred and fifty years after the Discovery, doubtless first
of all white men, they saw the Rocky Mountains from the east. This
probably was the Big Horn Range, one hundred and twenty miles east of
the Yellowstone Park. Finding this tremendous obstacle across their
path to the Pacific, they turned back. On July 12 they reached La
Prairie, to the great joy of their father, who had given them up for
lost.

A later Governor of Canada not only ignored the heroic services of the
Verendryes, but seized their goods, turned over their posts to another,
and reduced them to poverty.

It was a long time before their work was taken up, and it remained for
a man of another race to accomplish what they had so bravely striven
for. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scotch Highlander by birth, was an
energetic young agent of the Montreal Company in the Athabasca region.
He determined to undertake certain explorations. In June, 1789, he set
out from Fort Chippewyan, on the south shore of Lake Athabasca, with
four birch canoes and a party of white men and several Indians,
including a guide and interpreter. Going down Snake River, the
explorers reached Great {319} Slave Lake, then entered a heretofore
unknown river, the one which now bears the name of its discoverer, and
followed it until, on July 12, they sighted the Arctic Ocean, filled
with ice-floes, with spouting whales between.

In October, 1792, he set out, determined this time to reach the Pacific
Ocean. He left Fort Chippewyan, skirted the lake to Slave River, then
ascended its southwest tributary, Peace River. He wintered on this
stream in a trading-house which he had sent an advance party to build,
employed in hunting and trading. In May, having sent back a