Tuer Great JOURNEY IO

way up the river. They met the Coast Indians
six days’ journey along this trail, and ex-
changed their own furs and leather for short
iron bars, brass, copper, and beads, all of
which were procured from white men who
came in ships.

Mackenzie decided that, with his pro-
visions and ammunition running low, with his
men alarmed by the dangers of the river below
them, and with the distance to the ocean by
it so great, it would be folly to attempt the
descent. He conceived that he was on the
upper reaches of the River of the West (the
Columbia), the mouth of which, five or six
hundred miles to the south, had figured in a
conjectural fashion for many years on the
maps of the coast. Not until Simon Fraser in
1807 had dared the great dangers of which
Mackenzie had heard and had gone down the
Fraser to the sea, was it known that two great
rivers, not one, drained the interior of British
Columbia. Eliminating the route by the river,
there remained the mountain-trail, to reach
which they had to turn and to go upstream for
several days. Doubtful whether his men