and fall of the water,
which could be nothing else than the tide.

They caught a fish, also, resembling a herring, which none of the party
had ever seen except English Chief who declared it to be of a kind that
abounds in Hudson's Bay, and finally they beheld what settled the
question, a shoal of white whales, which their Indian guide said was the
principal food of the Esquimaux.

It was no wonder that the discoverers found the navigation very
intricate, because that great river, now named the Mackenzie, is known
to empty its waters into the Polar Sea by innumerable mouths which form
a delta of about forty miles in width. Storms, rain, and fogs, threw
additional hindrances in their way. There was, therefore, nothing left
for it but to erect a post and take possession of the land in the name
of the King.

Homeward! after that, was the order of the day. But what a mighty
distance off that home was! And, after all, when reached it was but a
log-hut or two in a part of the vast wilderness which, regarded from a
civilised-land point of view, was itself the very confines of the known
world. Our space forbids us to follow Mackenzie and his men on their
arduous and interesting return voyage. Suffice it to say that they
dragged the canoes by means of lines against the strong current for a
large portion of the way; and, after incurring innumerable dangers from
natives, rapids, storms, and starvation, they reached the Lake of the
Hills and landed at Fort Chipewyan on the 12th of September 1789, having
been absent for the long period of one hundred and two days.

That our hero was not content to rest upon the laurels thus gathered in
the far north, but longed to act the part of pioneer over the Rocky
Mountains into the far west, shall be made plain in our next chapter.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY TO THE FAR WEST PLANNED AND BEGUN.

Three years passed away, during which period Mackenzie, being busily
occupied with his arduous duties as a fur-trader, could not carry out
the more noble purposes of discovery on which his heart was set. But a
time at length arrived when circumstances permitted him to turn his eyes
once more with a set purpose on the unknown wilderness of the West.
Seated one fine morning about the beginning of spring, in his wooden
residence at Fort Chipewyan, he observed Reuben Guff passing the window
with an axe on his shoulder, that worthy, with his son and Swiftarrow,
having engaged in