880 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 23, 1904. 
Trails of the Pathfinders. 
VI. — Alexander Mackenzie. 
Across the Continent. 
On October 10, 1792, Alexander Mackenzie left Fort 
Chipewyan to proceed up Peace River, his purpose be- 
ing to go up the stream so far as the season would 
permit, and, Avintering wherever he must, to cross 
the m(juntains at its head, and continue westward, 
if possible, to the Pacific Ocean. 
Peace River takes its name from the settlement of 
their differences at Peace Point by the Knisteneaux 
and Beaver Indians. "When this , country was for- 
merly invaded by the Knisteneaux they found the 
Beaver Indians inhabitating the land about the Por- 
tage La Loche; and the adjoining tribes were those 
whom they called Slaves. They drove both these 
tribes before them; when the latter proceeded down 
the river from the Lake of the Hills, in consequence 
of which that part of it obtained the name of the 
Slave River. The former proceeded up the river, and 
when the Knisteneaux made peace with them, this 
place was settled to be the boundary." 
As they proceeded the weather was so cold and raw 
as to make travel unpleasant, but on the afternoon of 
October 17 they reached the falls, where there were 
two considerable portages, and where they found re- 
cent fires, showing that the canoes that Mackenzie had 
dispatched some days before were not far ahead. 
On the 19th they reached what is termed the Old 
Establishment, an early fort, and found that the people 
preceding them had slept there the previous night, and 
had carelessly set the large house on fire. But for 
Mackenzie's arrival all the buildings would have been 
destroyed. On either side of Peace River here were 
extensive plains, which offered pasture to great herds 
of buflalo. 
The next morning they^ reached the fort, and were 
received with shouts of rejoicing and volleys from the 
guns, by the Indians, who now expected rum and a 
carouse. About three hundred Indians belonged here 
who, though apparently Chipewyan by race, had 
adopted the manners and customs of their former ene- 
mies, the Crees. The contrast between the neat and 
decent appearance of the men and the very disagree- 
able looks of the women as striking. After staying 
here only long enough to give some advice and pres- 
ents to the Indians and his instructions to Mr. Find- 
lay, he kept on up the river. It was constantly 
growing colder and the ice gave some trouble, but on 
November i he reached the place where he expected 
to winter. 
Two men had been sent forward in the spring to cut 
and square timber for the erection of a house, and 
about seventy Indians had joined them. The men had 
worked well, and prepared timber enough for a con- 
siderable fort, as well as a ditch in which to set up 
the palisades of a stockade. Experience at the Old 
Establishment had shown that many vegetables would 
grow well in this soil and climate, but this was no time 
to tliink about gardening. What was more important 
was the fact that the plains on either side of the river 
abounded in buffalo, elk, wolves, foxes and bears, while 
a ridge of highlands or mountains to the westward 
was inhabited by great numbers of deer, being called 
Deer Mountain. 
As with all traders, Mackenzie's first business was to 
call the Indians together and give them some rum, 
tobacco and advice. They listened to the advice, drank 
the rum and smoked the tobacco, promising every- 
thing that he asked. 
On the 22d of November — although the sidehead 
giving the date in the printed volume says December — • 
the river froze up, so that the hunters had a bridge 
on which to cross. Game was plenty, yet, but for this 
means of crossing the streain they might have suffered 
from lack of food. It was here that the practice of 
medicine was forced on Mackenzie. By means of sim- 
ple remedies and by close personal attention to each 
case he cured a number of severe ailments among the 
Indians. 
Of one of these he says: "On my. arrival here last 
fall, I found that one of the young Indians had lost 
the use of his right hand by the bursting of a gun, 
and that his thumb had been maimed in such a man- 
ner as to hang only by a small strip of flesh. Indeed, 
when he was brought to me his wound was in such an 
offensive state and emitted such a putrid smell that it 
required all the resolution I possessed to examine it. 
Flis friends had done everything in their power to re- 
lieve him; but as it consisted only in singing about 
him and blowing upon his hand, the wound, as may 
be well imagined, had got into the deplorable state in 
which I found it. I was rather alarmed at the difficulty 
of the case, but as the young man's life was in a state 
of hazard, I was determined to risk my surgical repu- 
tation, and accordingly took him under my care. I 
immediately formed a r)oultice of bark, stripped from 
the roots of the spruce fir, which I applied to the 
.wound, having first washed it with the juice of the 
bark. This proved a very painful dressing. In a few 
days, however, the wound was clean and the proud 
flesh around it destroyed. I wished very much in this 
state of the business to have separated the thumb from 
the hand, which I well knew must be effected before 
the cure could be performed, but he would not con- 
sent to that operation till, by the application of vitriol, 
the flesh by which the thumb was suspended was 
shrivelled almost to a thread. When I had succeeded 
m this object I perceived that the wound was closing 
rather faster than I had desired. The salve I applied 
on the occasion was made of the Canadian balsam, 
wax, and tallow dropped from a burning candle into 
water. In short, I was so successful that about Christ- 
mas my patient engaged in an hunting party, and 
brougt me the tongue of an elk; nor was he finally 
ungrateful. When he left me I received the warmest 
acknowledgments, both from himself and the relations 
with whom he departed, for my care of him. I cer- 
tainly did not spare my time or attention on the occa- 
sion, as I regularly dressed the wound three times a 
day during the course of a month." 
Just before Christmas Mackenzie moved from his 
tent into his house, and now began the erection of 
houses for the men. Long before this the thermo- 
meter had been down far below zero, yet the men 
had been lying out in the cold and snow" without any 
shelter except an open shed. "It would be considered 
by the inhabitants of a milder climate as a great evil 
to be exposed to the weather at this rigorous season 
of the year, but these people are inured to it, and it 
is necessary to describe in some measure the hard- 
ships which they undergo without a murmur, in order 
to convey a general notion of them. 
"The men who were now with me left this place in 
the beginning of last May and went to the Rainy Lake 
in canoes, laden with packs of fur, which, from the 
immense length of the voyage and other occurring cir- 
cumstances, is a most severe trial of patience and 
perseverance; there they do not remain a sufficient 
tune for ordinary repose, when they take a load of 
goods in exchange, and proceed on their return, in a 
great measure, day and night. They had been arrived 
near two months, and all that time had been con- 
tnnially engaged in very toilsome labor, with nothing 
more than a common shed to protect them from the 
frost and snow. Such is the life which these people 
lead, and is continued with unremitting exertion till 
their strength is lost in premature old age." 
Mackenzie was now receiving plenty of beaver from the 
Indians. But, on the other hand, he was not without 
the usual^ annoyances to which the fur trader was ex- 
posed. The Indians had a tendency to quarrel among 
themselves, especially over their gambling at the plat- 
ter game, which is a sort of throwing of dice, the 
same, apparently, with the seed game, so common 
among all the Indians of the plains. On the whole, 
however, the winter passed quietly, and geese were seen 
on the 13th of March. 
In closing his account of this winter, passed high 
up on Peace River, Mackenzie gives some account of 
the Beaver and Rock Mountain Indians living there, 
who, he says, did not exceed 150 men capable of bear- 
mg arms. As late as 1786, when the first traders from 
Canada arrived on the banks of the Peace River, the 
natives employed bows and snares, but since then they 
had become well armed, bows were little used and 
snares were unknown. These Indians were excellent 
hunters and such hard workers in the field that they 
were extremely lean, being always in the best of train- 
ing. When a relation died the men blackened the face, 
cut off their hair and gashed their arms with knives 
and arrows. The women often cut off a finger at the 
■ death of a favorite son, husband or father. The Indians 
told of a time when no timber grew on the hills and 
plains along Peace River, but they were covered with 
moss, and the reindeer was the only animal. As the 
timber spread on them, elk and buffalo made their 
appearance, and the reindeer retired to the range of 
highlands called Deer Mountain. 
The month of April passed, and early in May Mac- 
kenzie loaded six canoes with the furs and provisions 
he had purchased, and despatched them to Fort Chipe- 
wyan. He, however, retained six of the men, who 
agreed to accompany him up Peace River on his west- 
ern voyage of discovery, and left his winter interpreter 
and another person in charge of the fort, to supply 
the natives with their ammunition during the summer. 
On the 9th day of May he embarked in a canoe twenty- 
fiye feet long, loaded with about 3,000 pounds of pro- 
visions, gifts for presents, arms, ammunition and bag- 
gage and ten persons, two of whom were hunters and 
interpreters. 
The first day's journey was through an interesting 
and beautiful country. "From the place which we 
quitted this morning the west side of the river dis- 
played a succession of the most beautiful scenery I 
had ever beheld. The ground rises at intervals to a 
considerable height, and stretching inwards to a con- 
siderable distance; at every interval or pause in the 
rise there is a very gently ascending space or lawHj 
which is alternate with abrupt precipices to the summit 
of the whole, or, at least, as far as the eye could dis- 
tinguish. This magnificent theatre of nature has all 
the decorations which the trees and animals of the 
country can afford it; groves of poplars in every shape 
vary the scene, and their intervals are enlivened with 
vast herds of elks and buffaloes, the former choosing 
the steeps and uplands, and the latter preferring the 
plains. At this time the buffaloes were attended with 
their young ones, who were frisking about them; and 
it appeared that the elks would soon exhibit the same 
enlivening circumstance. The whole country displayed 
an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear a blossom 
were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and 
the velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique 
rays of a rising or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety 
to the scene, which no expressions of mine are quali- 
fied to describe. The east side of the river consists 
of a range high land covered with the white spruce 
and the soft birch, while the banks abound with the 
alder and the willow. The water continued to rise, and 
the current being proportionately strong, we made a 
greater use of setting poles than paddles." 
On the following days camps of Beaver Indians were 
seen, and Mackenzie was somewhat anxious lest they 
should encourage his hunters to desert, but this did not 
take place. Game continued abundant, and on the 13th 
they saw along the river tracks of large bears, some 
of which were nine inches wide. "We saw one of their 
dens, or winter quarters, called watee, in an island, 
which was ten feet deep, five feet high and six feet 
wide, but we had not yet seen one of those animals. 
The Indians entertain great apprehension of this kind 
of bear which is called the grisly bear, and they never 
venture to attack it but in a party of at least three or 
four." 
The land on both sides of the river was high and 
irregular, and the banks and the rocky cliffs exhibited 
strata of red, green and yellow colors. "Some parts, 
indeed, offer a beautiful scenery, in some degrees sim- 
ilar to that which we passed on the second day of our 
voyage, and equally enlivened with the elk and the 
buffalo, who were feeding in great numbers and un- 
molested by the hunter." The next day they passed 
a river, of the mouth of which Mackenzie says: "This 
spot would be an excellent situation for a fort or fac- 
tory, as there is plenty of wood and every reason to 
believe that the country abounds in beaver. As for 
the other animals, they are in evident abundance, as 
in every direction the elk and the buffalo are seen in 
possession of the hills and the plains." Two elks were 
killed and a buffalo wounded that day. The land above 
their camp spread out in an extensive plain, gradually 
rising to a high ridge, chiefly grassy, and dotted with 
poplar and white birch trees. "The country is so 
crowded with animals as to have the appearance, in 
some places, of a stall-yard, from the state of the 
ground and the quantity of dung which is scattered 
over it. The soil is black and light. We this day saw 
two grisly and hideous bears." 
Although the ascent of the river had not been easy 
and they had frequently been obliged to unload and, 
repair their canoe, it was not until Sunday, the 19th/ 
that they met rapids and cascades, which presented 
greater difficulties. The canoe was heavily laden, the 
current enormously swift, and broken constantly by 
rocks and shoals, the only means of advance was by 
the tow line, and the beach was often narrow or want- 
ing. At the beginning of this very difficult stretch of 
water they found several islands of solid rock with but 
little soil upon them, the rock worn away near the 
water's surface, but unworn higher up, so that the 
islands presented, as it were, so many large tables, 
each of which was supported by a pedestal of a more 
circumscribed projection. On these islands geese were 
breeding. 
_ Carrying over short distances, often crossing the 
river m a very swift water, in constant danger from 
the great stones which frequently fell from the banks 
above, and much of the time in the water, they pur- 
sued their way for a short distance over this very dif- 
ficult passage. The work was terribly hard, and as 
far as they could see up the river there was no im- 
provement of the channel. Therefore, Mackenzie sent 
out a party of six men to explore, and on their return 
that same night they reported that it was necessary 
to make a long carry— nine miles they said— before 
smooth water ^would be met with. The canoe was 
therefore unloaded, the baggage carried up to the top 
of the bank above the river, and then the canoe was 
fairly hauled up to the same height. There they 
camped. In two days' march from this place, carry- 
ing the load and the canoe, they again met quiet water. 
The journal for Thursday, the 23d, enumerates the 
different sorts of trees which they saw, among which 
is named bois-picant, a tree which Mackenzie had not 
seen before, but which was apparently the west coast 
shrub — the devil's club, which grows in a few places on 
the eastern slope of the Continental Divide. Although he 
did not know it. Mackenzie was now quite close to the 
summit of the Rocky Mountains. 
The river here was wide, flowing in great volume, 
and very swiftly but smooth. There were many ani- 
