CHAPTER VII
WINTERING ON THE PEACE

He left the Downs on 7 April, 1792, and upon his arrival
in Canada, attended the annual meeting of the partners at
Grande Portage in August, and then hurried back to
Chipewyan, which is a two months’ journey. He had, how-
ever, previously sent word that a small party of men was to
be dispatched to the Peace for the purpose of squaring
timbers for a house. ‘The whole time between his arrival at
Fort Chipewyan and his departure on 10 October was
spent in preparation for the dash to the Pacific, and in
discussing with his sympathetic cousin his theories, hopes
and fears. “That he would eventually make this trip was
foreshadowed from the first. In fact it is quite plain that he
wanted to emerge on the Pacific on his first journey, and
was grievously disappointed when the Great River carried
him down to the Arctic.

Fully convinced of the existence of a river in British
territory flowing into the Pacific, Mackenzie once more
took up the quest. On 10 October, 1792, we find him
at Fort Chipewyan where he had made every necessary
preparation for his contemplated dash across the Rockies to
the western slope. It was his purpose to winter at the most
distant settlement on the Peace in order to shorten the work
of the following season. “The Peace,”’ he remarks, ‘‘is the
route by which I propose to attempt my next discovery
across the mountains from the source of that river.”

H ~S