84 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



katchewan, of the Athabaska, and of Peace river, he found 

 passes through the mountains to the Fraser, the Kootenay and 

 the Columbia. As already mentioned, Frog portage carried him 

 from the Saskatchewan over into the Churchill, and Methye 

 portage to the Clearwater and Athabaska. The Athabaska 

 brought him to Lake Athabaska. From thence he reached the 

 Peace river, and, by way of Slave river, Great Slave lake . At 

 the western end of Great Slave lake he entered the mighty Mac- 

 kenzie, and floated down its broad stream to the Arctic; or he 

 turned off into the Liard, and by way of Pelly river reached the 

 Yukon. Again, from the eastern end of Great Slave lake he 

 might reach the .Barren Grounds and Backs river, and so once 

 more to the Arctic. 



Nominally the men who led the way toward the Pacific 

 were fur-traders first and explorers afterward; but three at 

 least, and those the most notable, were explorers first and only 

 incidentally fur-traders— Pierre de La Verendrye, Alexander 

 Mackenzie and David Thompson. To these three the fur-trade 

 was but a means to an end. They had neither capacity nor 

 heart for the traffic in peltries, and though they were too con- 

 scientious to deliberately neglect the work entrusted to them as 

 traders, they bent it to meet the needs of their great projects 

 of geographical discovery. 



Nothing could be more romantic than the story, of Pierre 

 Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de La Verendrye. Born in the 

 little town of Three Rivers, he listened as a boy to the stirring 

 tales of fur-traders and coureurs du hois who had ranged far 

 and wide throughout the wild country north of the St. Lawrence, 

 the Ottawa and the Great Lakes, and who told him of a mar- 

 vellous region to the westward of Lake Superior, inhabited by 

 dwarfs, one-legged men, and other interesting specimens of 

 humanity, not to mention four-footed creatures whose habits 

 were, to say the least, extraordinary. But what fired the 

 imagination of young La Verendrye more than anything else 

 was the report that this western country was watered by a 

 mighty river that flowed into the Western Sea — the discovery 

 of which would bring glory to any ambitious son of New France. 



He determined to devote his life to western exploration. For 

 some years, however, circumstances stood in the way. Finally 

 he succeeded in interesting the governor De Beauharnois in his 

 project, and what was perhaps more important, induced some 



