y 22, 1793, near Bella Coola. By September, after perils too
numerous to be told, MacKenzie was back at his fur post on Peace River.
As his discoveries on this trip blazed the way to new hunting ground
for his company, they brought both honor and wealth to MacKenzie. He
was knighted by the English King for his explorations, and he retired
to an estate in Scotland, where he died about 1820.

Meanwhile, Napoleon has sold Louisiana to the United States. The
American explorers, Lewis and Clark, have crossed from the Missouri to
the Columbia; and now John Jacob Astor, the great fur merchant of New
York, in 1811 sends his fur traders overland to build a fort at the
mouth of Columbia River. The Northwest Company in frantic haste
dispatches explorers to follow up MacKenzie's work and take possession
of the Pacific fur trade before Astor's men can reach the field. It
becomes a race for the Pacific.

[Illustration: SIMON FRASER]

Simon Fraser is sent in 1806 to build posts west of the Rockies in New
Caledonia, and to follow that unknown river which MacKenzie mistook for
the Columbia, on down to the sea. Two years he passed building the
posts, that exist to this {331} day as Fraser planned them: Fort
MacLeod at the head of Parsnip River, on a little lake set like an
emerald among the mountains; Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, a reach of
sheeny green waters like the Trossachs, dotted with islands and
ensconced in mountains; Fraser Fort on another lake southward; Fort St.
George on the main Fraser River. Then, in May of 1808, with four
canoes Fraser descends the river named after him, accompanied by Stuart
and Quesnel and nineteen voyageurs. This was the river where the
rapids had turned MacKenzie back, canyon after canyon tumultuous with
the black whirlpools and roaring like a tempest. Before essaying the
worst runs of the cascades Fraser ordered a canoe lightened at the prow
and manned by the five best voyageurs. It shot down the current like a
stone from a catapult. "She flew from one danger to another," relates
Fraser, who was watching the canoe from the bank, "till the current
drove her on a rock. The men disembarked, and we had to plunge our
daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river as we went
down to their aid, our lives hanging on a thread." Like MacKenzie,
Fraser was compelled to abandon canoes. Each with a pack of eighty
pounds, the voyageurs set out on foot down that steep gorge where the