Stepping Westward =—19

not begun until 1769. No Russian settlements had yet come
into being on the mainland of Alaska, but freebooting
Russian sea-otter hunters were active on the Aleutian Islands.

Rey. Dr. Bryce is authority for the statement that
Alexander Mackenzie was born at Stornoway in 1763,! of
the family of Mackenzies of Seaforth, who formerly owned
the Island of Lewis. He received, as the phrase goes, a fair
education, and, like all boys cradled by the sea, he was much
attracted by the risks and excitement of boating in those
turbulent waters. One who had spent his youth in mastering
the navigation of the sea in an open boat was not likely to
be daunted in later life by the lakes and rivers of Northern
Canada, Pitting his skill, ingenuity and endurance against
the elements gave him the measure of some of nature’s
obstacles, and like a veteran of many storms he was able in
the northern wilds, in the midst of toil, gloom and loneliness,
to visualise the silver lining, to foresee the dawn, and cheer-
fully anticipate ease after toil, while those around him were
sunk in gloom and discouragement. |

The inquisitive mind and enterprising spirit with which
nature had endowed him were well seconded by a constitu-
tion and a frame of body equal to the most arduous under-
takings, a combination of physical, mental, moral and
spiritual qualities which lost nothing in that rough school
among the stormy Hebrides.

He speaks of the ‘commercial views”? which had led
him early in life to become a trader among the Indians,
But posterity turns a deaf ear to that plea, preferring rather
to believe that he was of the chosen, one of the few who
“sail under sealed orders,” which only the spirit ever reads,
and thereby inspires the workaday man to his true mission

1 Bryce, Rev. Dr. George, Mackenzie, Selkirk, Simpson, p. 10.
Morang and Co.