Wuar Lies Beyonp tue Mountains? 4I

the north end of the Rockies to the Pacific,
and is identical with the great river Cook had
discovered in 1778. Further: “Another man by
the name of McKenzie was left by Pond at
Slave Lake with orders to go down the River,
and from thence to Unalaska, and so to Kam-
skatsha, and thence to England through
Russia, etc. If he meets with no accident,
you may have him with you next year.”
Pond was a braggart and a liar. His
account of the river is entirely imaginary.
Mackenzie certainly took no orders from
Pond, and had no such extended design as is
here ascribed to him. He was far better
equipped than Pond as an explorer, and he
was probably able, before he set out, to correct
some of Pond’s more flagrant errors. But
Pond and Mackenzie had spent the winter of
1787-8 together in Athabaska; during that
winter Mackenzie’s ambitions as an explorer
appear to have begun; and he undoubtedly
started downstream in 1789 in the hope and
belief that he should reach the Pacific in
accordance with Pond’s theory. In one pas-
sage he writes: “It was in the summer of