Tue RETURN AND A FResu START 69

The trip was one of the most rapid in
the history of exploration: the outward voy-
age took forty days, an average of thirty-
seven miles a day; three days were spent on
the shores of the Arctic; and the return con-
sumed fifty-nine days, an average of twenty-
six miles a day.

What had Mackenzie accomplished? His
own view was that the chief result was nega-
tive: he had demonstrated that the famous
North-West Passage did not exist. His expe-
dition, he wrote, ‘proved without a doubt
that there is not a North-West Passage below
this latitude [Whale Island], and I believe it
will be generally allowed that no passage is
practicable in a higher latitude, the sea being
eternally covered with ice”—a correct con-
clusion. Further, he had shown that there
was no easy route to the Pacific such as Pond
had imagined. He had, indeed, failed in his
object, and his first name for the river which
he had discovered was River Disappointment.
But if the journey was a failure from his point
of view, it was a most productive failure. He
had solved the mystery of the drainage of

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