is day
the men had been in a state of extreme ill-humour, and as they did
not choose to vent it openly upon me, they disputed and quarrelled
among themselves. About sunset the canoe struck upon the stump of a
tree, which broke a large hole in her bottom, a circumstance that gave
them an opportunity to let loose their discontents without reserve.
I left them as soon as we had landed and ascended an elevated bank.
It now remained for us to fix on a proper place for building another
canoe, as the old one was become a complete wreck. At a very early
hour of the morning every man was employed in making preparations for
building another canoe, and different parties went in search of wood
and gum." While the boat was building, Mackenzie gave his crew a good
lecture on their conduct. "I assured them it was my fixed unalterable
determination to proceed in spite of every difficulty and danger."

The result was highly satisfactory. "The conversation dropped and the
work went on."

In five days the canoe was ready and they were soon paddling happily
onwards towards the sea, where the Indians told him he would find white
men building houses. They reached the coast some three weeks later.
The Salmon River, as it is called, flows through British Columbia and
reaches the sea just north of Vancouver Island, which had been
discovered by Vancouver the year before.

Alexander Mackenzie had been successful. Let us hear the end of his
tale: "I now mixed up some vermilion in melted grease, and inscribed
in large characters, on the south-east face of the rock on which we
had slept last night, this brief memorial--'Alexander Mackenzie, from
Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred
and ninety three.'"

CHAPTER LI

PARRY DISCOVERS LANCASTER SOUND

The efforts of Arctic explorers of past years, Frobisher, Davis,
Baffin, Behring, and Cook, had all been more or less frustrated by
the impenetrable barrier of ice, which seemed to stretch across the
Polar regions like a wall, putting an end to all further advance.

Now, early in the nineteenth century, this impenetrable bar of ice
had apparently moved and broken up into detached masses and icebergs.
The news of a distinct change in the Polar ice was brought home by
various traders in the Greenland waters, and soon gave rise to a revival
of these voyages for the discovery of the North Pole and a passage
round the northern coast of America to the Pacific Oce