196 Mackenzie’s Voyages

years to explore the country west of the Rockies, except
several expeditions of the Spanish in the south, or to send
out land parties to help in solving the question on which
numerous ships of different nations were engaged on the
Pacific seaboard.

In the retrospect it would seem that it required not only
2000 years but all past time to awaken the mind of man to
the fact that he was in possession of a planet which from the
beginnings of its habitable stages had been crying out for his
inspection. It remained for a man of ideas, a private individual,
to undertake on his own initiative this great task of linking
the oceans.

Two half-dazed Indians peered out from their circum-
scribed mental niche upon the returned explorers, trying
with their limited outlook to understand something about
it. ‘‘Mackenzie had reached the Pacific, overland from
Canada.” Even that pregnant statement conveyed little to
the Europe that knew so little of America; but to-day an
enlightened world thrills to such a home-coming.

“Here my voyages of discovery terminate. Their toils
and their dangers, their solicitudes, and their sufferings,
have not been exaggerated in my description. On the contrary,
in many instances, language has failed me in the attempt to
describe them. I received, however, the reward of my
labours, for they were crowned with success.”