illed with
the idea of an overland journey to the Pacific that he could not sleep
or rest. He had felt himself handicapped by lack of knowledge of
astronomy and surveying when on the voyage to the Arctic, so he asked
leave of absence from his company, came down by canoe to Montreal, and
sailed for England to spend the winter studying in London. Here,
everything was in a ferment over the voyages of Cook and Hanna and
Meares, over the {73} seizure of British trading-ships by the viceroy
of Mexico, over the Admiralty's plans to send Vancouver out to complete
Cook's explorations. The rumours were as fuel to the flame that burned
in Mackenzie. The spring of 1792 saw him hurrying back to Fort
Chipewyan to prepare for the expedition on which he had set his heart.
When October came he launched his canoes, fully manned and provisioned,
on Lake Athabaska, and, ascending the Peace river to a point about six
miles above the forks formed by its junction with the Smoky, he built a
rude palisaded fur-post and spent the winter there.

Spring came and found Mackenzie ready to go forward into the unknown
regions of the west, regions as yet untrodden by the feet of white men.
Alexander Mackay, one of the most resolute and capable traders in the
service of the North-West Company, was to be his companion on the
journey; and with them were to go six picked French-Canadian voyageurs
and two Indians as guides. They had built a birch-bark canoe of
exceptional strength and lightness. It was twenty-five feet long, some
four feet in beam, twenty-six inches deep, and had a carrying capacity
of three thousand pounds. Explorers and {74} men stepped into their
light craft on the evening of May 9, 1793. The fort fired guns and
waved farewell; the paddlers struck up a voyageurs' song; and the
blades dipped in rhythmic time. Mackenzie waved his hat back to the
group in front of the fort gate; and then with set face headed his
canoe westward for the Pacific.

Recall what was happening now out on the Pacific! Robert Gray was
heading home to Boston with news of the discovery of the great river.
Vancouver was back from San Francisco carefully charting the inner
channel of the coast. Baranoff, the little czar of the Russian
traders, was coasting at the head of fifteen hundred 'bidarkies'
between the Aleutians and Sitka; and Spain was still sending out ragged
pilots to chart the seas which she had not the marine to hold.

The big canoe went on, u