54 Mackenzie’s Voyages

distances were so great that, in order to get the season’s
travelling done between the break-up and the freeze-up, the
brigades had to be kept on the move almost continuously.

Writers of the time state that the canoemen worked
about twenty hours a day for two or three weeks at a stretch,
resting only every two hours for five or ten minutes to fill
their pipes, hence their custom of describing distances by
so many pipes. They were usually allowed a dram of high
wines, a strong distillation from corn, in the morning and
another at night.?

Compared with what they had been accustomed to, it
cannot be said that the work was arduous; the hours were
long, but, having a current varying from two to eight and
even ten miles an hour, they were not obliged to paddle with
great labour, the river itself doing most of the work; it was
merely necessary to get into the current and stay in it as
many hours as they conveniently could. Hence the state-
ment so often made that Mackenzie drove his men at an
excessive speed is not well founded. He merely observed a
routine that all northern canoe travellers observe of giving
the river current a chance to do as much of the work as
possible in the shortest time. It is generally conceded that
Mackenzie was by no means so merciless as Governor
Simpson, who in his day was regarded as an insatiable
‘‘speed-fiend,”’ incessantly urging his men to greater efforts.

The fact of the matter is that, on a trip of this kind,
every member of the expedition excepting the Indians knew
the conditions of the problem and was personally concerned
to do his utmost, in loyal co-operation with his chief, to get
the voyage successfully over as quickly as the circumstances
would allow. It will be found that the voyageurs, “his
people,” as he so often calls them with a note of patriarchal

1Landmann’s Adventures and Recollections. Two vols. London, 1852.