or ambition to dream; but ambition was there in the person of
Alexander Mackenzie, the young fur trader, dreaming what he hardly
dared hope. Business men fight shy of dreamers; so Mackenzie told his
dreams to no one but his cousin Roderick, whom he pledged to secrecy.
For fifty years the British government had offered a reward of 20,000
pounds to any one who should discover a Northwest Passage between the
Atlantic and the Pacific. The hope of such a passageway had led many
navigators on bootless voyages; and here was Mackenzie with the same
bee in his bonnet. To the north of Chipewyan he saw a mighty river,
more than a mile wide in places, walled in by great ramparts, and
flowing to unknown seas. To the west he saw another river rolling
through the far mountains. Where did this river come from, and where
did both rivers go? Mackenzie was not the man to leave vital questions
unanswered. He determined to find out; but difficulties lay in the
way. He couldn't leave the Athabascan posts. That was overcome by
getting his cousin Roderick to take charge. The Northwest Fur Company,
which had succeeded the French fur traders of Quebec and Montreal when
Canada passed from the hands of the French to the English, wouldn't
assume any cost or risk for exploring unknown seas. This was more
niggardly than the Hudson's Bay Company, which had paid all cost of
outlay for its explorers; but Mackenzie assumed risk and cost himself.
Then the Indians hesitated to act as guides; so Mackenzie hired guides
when he could, seized them by compulsion when he couldn't hire them,
and went ahead without guides when they escaped.

[Illustration: Eskimo trading his Pipe, carved from Walrus Tusk, for
the Value of Three Beaver Skins.]

May--the frog moon--and June--the bird's egg moon--were the festive
seasons at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca. Indian hunters came
tramping in from the Barren Lands with toboggan loads of pelts drawn by
half-wild husky dogs. Woody Crees and Slaves and Chipewyans paddled
across the lake in canoes laden to the gunwales with furs. A world of
white skin tepees sprang up like mushrooms round the fur post. By June
the traders had collected the furs, sorted and shipped them in
flotillas of keel boat, barge, and canoe, east to Lake Superior and
Montreal. On the evening of June 2, 1789, Alexander Mackenzie, chief
trader, had finished the year's trade and sent the furs to the Eastern
warehouses of the Northwest Comp