ond? Whither runs this great river from
Athabasca Lake? Whence comes the great river from the mountains? Will
the river that flows north or the river that comes from the west,
either of them lead to the Pacific Coast, where Cook's crews found
wealth of sea otter? The lure of the Unknown is the lure of the siren.
First you possess it, then it possesses you! Cooped up in his fort on
Lake Athabasca, Alexander MacKenzie, the Nor'wester, begins wondering
about those rivers, but you can't ask business men to bank on the
Unknown, to write blank checks for profits on what {325} you may not
find. And the Nor'westers were all stern business men. For every
penny's outlay they exacted from their wintering partners and clerks
not ten but a hundredfold. And Alexander MacKenzie received no
encouragement from his company to explore these unknown rivers. The
project got possession of his mind. Sometimes he would pace the little
log barracks of Fort Chippewyan from sunset to day dawn, trying to work
out a way to explore those rivers; or, sitting before the huge hearth
place, he would dream and dream till, as he wrote his cousin Roderick,
"I did not know what I was doing or where I was." Finally he induced
his cousin to take charge of the fort for a summer. Then, assuming all
risk and outlay, he set out on his own responsibility June 3, 1789, to
follow the Great River down to the Arctic Ocean. "English Chief," who
often went down to Hudson Bay for the rival company, went as
MacKenzie's guide, and there were also in the canoes two or three white
men, some Indians as paddlers, and squaws to cook and make moccasins.

[Illustration: FORT CHIPPEWYAN, ATHABASCA LAKE (From a recent
photograph)]

{326} The canoes passed Peace River pouring down from the mountains;
then six dangerous rapids, where many a Nor'west voyageur had perished,
one of MacKenzie's canoes going smash over the falls with a squaw, who
swam ashore; then rampart shores came, broader and higher than the St.
Lawrence or the Hudson, the boats skimming ahead with blankets hoisted
for sails through foggy days and nights of driving rain. Cramped and
rain-soaked, bailing water from the canoes with huge sponges, the
Indians began to whine that the way was "hard, white man, hard." Then
the river lost itself in a huge lagoon, Slave Lake, named after
defeated Indians who had taken refuge here; and the question was, which
way to go through the fog across the marshy lake! P