16 Mackenzie’s Voyages

Mackenzie this was the only post in this part of the country
up to 1785, While there is no definite information on the sub-
ject it is generally accepted that Pond was the first white
man to stand on the shores of Athabasca Lake. In 1788,
Pond sent Cuthbert Grant and Laurent Le Roux to estab-
lish posts on Great Slave Lake. It was during the journeys
in this connection that Cuthbert Grant lost two canoes and
five men in the rapids of Slave River known since as the
Portage des Noyes. There is a probability that the French
had been as far as Great Slave Lake before this, but whether
before or after Hearne passed that way is not certain. At any
rate, when the North-West Company reached it in 1786,
they found there a family of French-Indian descent of the
name of Beaulieu, indicating the likelihood of the presence
of the French on the lake or in the district long before.

Alexander Mackenzie then comes upon the scene and
takes up the story of extension north and west. Up to this
time no white man had been below Great Slave Lake, nor
up the Peace River any distance. The Saskatchewan had
been ascended by Anthony Hendry as far as the Red Deer
River where he had wintered with the Blackfeet Indians
in 1754-5. A French party sent out by Le Gardeur de
Saint Pierre had established Fort La Jonquiére, which accord-
ing to Masson was located near the present site of Calgary.
The younger Vérendryes had been to a point on the Missouri
near Helena, Montana, but the west and the north had yet
to be pierced by a more daring adventurer. In passing, it may
be mentioned that Lewis and Clarke, acting under instruc-
tions from President Jefferson, followed the track of the
Vérendryes up the Missouri, and crossed the divide, reaching
the Pacific on 15 November, 1805.

The nearest approach to the Rockies, or one equally
near as that of the Vérendryes, made before Mackenzie