2 Mackenzie’s Voyages

discoveries cannot be seen in proper perspective except
against a background of history. In such a brief essay as
this must be, only the barest outlines of the earlier story can
be sketched.

His exploits as an explorer place him in the first rank
among the score or so of resourceful men whose travels and
discoveries in remote parts have served to amplify our know-
ledge of the world’s geography.

That he was a keen business man, a capable administrator,
and a man of broad vision, were matters of greater importance
to his fur-trading associates than the fact that he had per-
formed feats equal to anything in the history of exploration.
The reader, however, derives an additional pleasure from his
versatility, for, like the Elizabethans, he moves in far camps
with a gallant spirit, and a masterful mind that no untoward
circumstance can daunt.

It is the purpose in these pages to follow his track to the
Frozen Sea, and then to the Pacific, with sufficient references
to his private life, his business activities, and the events of
the time to give perspective to his work as an explorer. The
stage on which this romantic drama was enacted covered more
than half a continent, and was variously referred to in the
literature of the fur-trade as le pays d’En Haut, the Indian
Territory, the Interior, and by a more recent public as the
North-West.

When Mackenzie was still a clerk in Montreal it was
virtually a terra incognita. Moreover, it is necessary to a
proper understanding of the story that a résumé of the
explorations and discoveries of his immediate predecessors
should be given. The first two chapters therefore summarise
the French and British advances north-westward, while
an account of the growth and recession of Spanish and
Russian dominion on the Pacific will be found in chapter vi.