Tracking Up-Stream au

It froze hard that night and was cold all day Friday.
Another day brought them out on the “Lake of the Hills,”
better known to-day as Lake Athabasca, where a spanking
breeze wafted them under a high sail to Fort Chipewyan by
three in the afternoon. Mr. Macleod, Cuthbert Grant, and
four carpenters were employed ir the prosaic work of build-
ing a new house. ‘There was no fanfare of trumpets to wel-
come the intrepid voyagers back from the frozen seas.
Corsairs of old and ravishers of the Spanish Main were
more warmly welcomed with their spoils than were Macken-
zie and his tattered crew by the workaday carpenters on the
September afternoon, one hundred and two days after his
departure for the unknown.

He had definitely determined the course of a river which
drained a basin of 682,000 square miles. He had added to
the trader’s domain one of the richest fur-bearing territories
in the world.

As far as the scientific world was concerned, his great
achievement settled for all time the question regarding the
existence of a practicable North-West passage, and those
navigators who had cherished dreams of carrying off the
£20,000 offered by the British Government for the dis-
covery of a sea-way between the Atlantic and the Pacific
had the wind taken out of their sails by the exploit of an
adventurous fur-trader and his motley crew.

That his associates were envious of his achievement even
to the point of jealousy is indicated by the cool way in which
they ignored his discovery. Mackenzie was chagrined to
find that his confréres at Grande Portage and Montreal
avoided the subject. There was no cordial recognition of
his success, although they knew that it brought honour to
the North-West Company. Throughout the chronicles of
the fur-trade it is frequently remarked that the traders were