La Grande Riviére en Bas 49

it may be surmised also that he was not particularly anxious
to find himself on the shores of the Icy Sea anywhere in
the neighbourhood of the Coppermine. | |

The Russians were known to have established trading-
posts on the North Pacific, and Mackenzie therefore took
money with him in order to be able to traffic with them.
Whatever private hopes and fears he may have entertained,
there is no question that he was greatly influenced by the
theories held by Peter Pond with regard to the river flowing
out of Great Slave Lake. |

The question then that was uppermost in his mind,
when he entered the Grand River, was whether the course
would continue west to Cook’s River, or north to the
Arctic, or south-west towards the region ‘“‘where rolls the
Oregon.”

In the Ogden letters the following is of interest as indi-
cating the sources of some of the notions Mackenzie had of
the river he was about to descend: ‘‘From out of the Great
Slave Lake runs a very large river which runs almost south-
west and has the largest falls on it in the known world. ‘The
falls are in longitude 141. ‘The great chain of mountains
that extends from Mexico along the western or Pacific
Ocean, and the North Pacific Ocean, terminates in latitude
624, and longitude 136, so that the Slave River runs to the
westward of them and empties into the ocean by its course
in about-the Lat. of 59.”

These statements of Ogden’s are based partly upon
information obtained from Pond, and partly upon wild
-surmisings of his own, Pond, it is known, obtained his data
from Indian sources. Some of it was authentic, and some
mere hearsay, often of an exaggerated character, and it may
be taken for granted that there were misconceptions on the
part of Pond in his interpretations of the Indian stories.