DISCOVERY BY ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

nationalities had made fairly known. There, according
to native reports, “white men were to be seen who wore
armor,’ whereby were meant either the Spaniards or
English, or even the aborigines of the coast, who, as will
appear further on, were often taken for whites by the
natives of the interior, and amongst whom the use of
armor was quite common. An expert had finally decided
that the distance to the grande mer de [ouest, as the Pacific
was called by the French Canadians of the time, must be
very great. But this only urged Mackenzie to reach it by
land.

During his expedition to the Arctic Ocean he had more
than once deplored his want of astronomical knowledge
and the lack of the proper instruments. To obtain this
desideratum, he crossed over to London in 1791, there
acquired the necessary information, and returned in the
spring of 1792, when he sent ahead of his expedition two
men to prepare timber for houses and palisades wherein to
winter, so as to be able to make an early start in 1793.

Mackenzie was the discoverer of New Caledonia and,
therefore, of the interior of British Columbia. Nay, as the
skippers who visited the North Pacific coast never ven-
tured inland, he might with reason be put down as the
discoverer of the whole country. On that account, the
‘smallest details entered in his Journal, the aspect of the
country, and the nature of its fauna, such as they appeared
to him, but more especially his account of his first encoun-
ters with the natives are, in our eyes, invested with an
importance which could hardly be exaggerated. Having
left Fort Chippewayan on the roth of October, 1792, he
arrived ten days later at the last post established on the
Peace River, “amidst the rejoicing and firing of the people,
who were animated with the prospect of again indulging
themselves in the luxury of rum, of which they had been

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