200 Mackenzie’s Voyages

and a list of achievements, including the establishment of
sovereignty over an important section of the empire, which
is entitled to commensurate recognition.

The publication in London of the Voyages of Meares,
Dixon, Maurelle, Vancouver, Broughton and Mackenzie
aroused a greater interest than that awakened by the publica-
tion of Captain Cook’s Voyages in 1784-5. ‘The Nootka
Controversy had brought the civilised world to the verge of
war, and the civilised world was therefore all agog about that
new land which faced the North Pacific Ocean. Vancouver’s
and Mackenzie’s explorations had in the main completed
the mapping of the continent. The former had surveyed
the coast-line from Cape Mendocino to Alaska with an
accuracy which is the admiration of geographers and navi-
gators of to-day.

Cook had concluded that the continent was continuous
to the Arctic, and Vancouver’s surveys and Mackenzie’s
Voyages confirmed that conclusion. It was at last realised
beyond all peradventure that no practicable waterway
connected the Atlantic with the Pacific, and that no
arm of the sea extended inland for more than a hundred
miles, though it remained for Captain Roald Amundsen
on 27 August, 1905, to finally demonstrate, in his forty-
seven-ton yacht, the Gyoa, that a water communication
actually existed north of the continent, in the region of
perpetual ice.+

From the different narratives published at the time it
was apparent that the climate was mild, the country suitable
for settlement, that it was rich in furs, timber and fish, and
possibly in minerals. It was in the same latitude as Canada.
The 49th parallel had come to be regarded, though without

1 Amundsen, Captain Roald, The North-West Passage. New York,
Dutton and Co., 1908, pp. 125-6.