attraction in any such attempt. For the present purpose
it is sufficient to say that, setting out from Fort Chipewyan
on Lake Athabaska in October, 1792, he spent the winter
trading for furs at a place which he named Fort Fork on
the Peace River. It must never be forgotten that Mac-
kenzie was a fur-trader and that his explorations both
north and west were undertaken in the interests of his
company to discover new regions for trade to which the
rival Hudson’s Bay Company could not by any possible
construction of its vaguely-worded charter lay claim.

In May, 1793, having closed the winter’s business and
despatched the collected furs for Fort Chipewyan, he
with his nine companions resumed his journey up the
Peace River. In his account of the voyage Mackenzie

~ says: My winter interpreter, with another person whom |

left here to take care of the fort and supply the natives
with ammunition during the summer, shed tears on the
reflection of those dangers which we might encounter in
our expedition, while my own people offered up their
prayers that we might return in safety from it.” Arriving
at the source of the Parsnip, the southern branch of the -
Peace River, he crossed a low divide of 817 paces to a
small lake whose waters flowed into the Fraser. He
launched his canoe upon this unknown River of the West—
he thought it to be the Columbia—and descended it until
on the advice of the natives he determined to seek the
Pacific Ocean by a shorter route. Accordingly he ascended
a tributary of the Fraser, now known as the Blackwater,
and, journeying by land and by water, at length reached
Bella Coola, or Rascals’ Village, as he calls it. Thence
he Gonbaued Ine voyage towards the open ocean, until
22nd July, when having tested his artificial horizon, he
concluded to return.

The exact point which marked the termination of his
voyage has been for years a matter of doubt. This doubt
originates, almost entirely, in the discrepancy which
exists between the text of Mackenzie’s ““Voyage’” and the
footnotes which he has added. If the latter be excluded
the difficulty is greatly diminished. In estimating the
reliance to be placed on those footnotes one must bear in
mind that, as appears from his letters to his cousin Roderick
Mackenzie, the explorer transcribed his journal and
prepared it for publication in 1794. Vancouver’s “Voyage”
Page Six