wless foreign soldiers; and she perished of
starvation outside the walls. Matonabbee had been absent when the
French came. He returned to find the fort where he had spent his life
in ruins. The English whom he thought invincible were defeated and
prisoners of war. Hearne, whom the dauntless old chief had led through
untold perils, was a captive. Matonabbee's proud spirit was broken.
The grief was greater than he could bear. All that living stood for
had been lost. Drawing off from observation, Matonabbee blew his
brains out.

[1] I have purposely avoided bringing up the dispute as to a mistake of
some few degrees made by Hearne in his calculations--the point really
being finical.

[2] I am sorry to say that in pioneer border warfares I have heard of
white men acting in a precisely similar beastly manner after some
brutal conflict. To be frank, I know of one case in the early days of
Minnesota fur trade, where the irate fur trader killed and devoured his
weak companion, not from famine, but sheer frenzy of brutalized
passion. Such naked light does wilderness life shed over our
drawing-room philosophies of the triumphantly strong being the highest
type of manhood.

[3] Again the wilderness plunges us back to the primordial: if man be
but the supreme beast of prey, whence this consciousness of blood guilt
in these unschooled children of the wilds?

PART IV

1780-1793

FIRST ACROSS THE ROCKIES--HOW MACKENZIE
CROSSED THE NORTHERN ROCKIES AND LEWIS
AND CLARK WERE FIRST TO CROSS FROM
MISSOURI TO COLUMBIA

CHAPTER X

1780-1793

FIRST ACROSS THE ROCKIES

How Mackenzie found the Great River named after him and then pushed
across the Mountains to the Pacific, forever settling the question of a
Northwest Passage

There is an old saying that if a man has the right mettle in him, you
may stick him a thousand leagues in the wilderness on a barren rock and
he will plant pennies and grow dollar bills. In other words, no matter
where or how, success will succeed. No class illustrates this better
than a type that has almost passed away--the old fur traders who were
lords of the wilderness. Cut off from all comfort, from all
encouragement, from all restraint, what set of men ever had fewer
incentives to go up, more temptations to go down? Yet from the fur
traders sprang the pioneer heroes of America. When young Donald Smith
came out--a raw lad--to America, he was packed off to eighteen