But despondency did not benumb
Mackenzie into apathy, as it has weaker men.
By April he had shipped the year's furs from the forks of Peace River
to Chipewyan. By May his season's work was done. He was ready to go
up Peace River. A birch canoe thirty feet long, lined with lightest of
cedar, was built. In this were stored pemmican and powder. Alexander
Mackay, a clerk of the company, was chosen as first assistant. Six
Canadian _voyageurs_--two of whom had accompanied Mackenzie to the
Arctic--and two Indian hunters made up the party of ten who stepped
into the canoes at seven in the evening of May 9, 1793.
Peace River tore down from the mountains flooded with spring thaw. The
crew soon realized that paddles must be bent against the current of a
veritable mill-race; but it was safer going against, than with, such a
current, for unknown dangers could be seen from below instead of above,
where suction would whirl a canoe on the rocks. Keen air foretold the
nearing mountains. In less than a week snow-capped peaks had crowded
the canoe in a narrow canon below a tumbling cascade where the river
was one wild sheet of tossing foam as far as eye could see. The
difficulty was to land; for precipices rose on each side in a wall,
down which rolled enormous boulders and land-slides of loose earth. To
_portage_ goods up these walls was impossible. Fastening an
eighty-foot tow-line to the bow, Mackenzie leaped to the declivity, axe
in hand, cut foothold along the face of the steep cliff to a place
where he could jump to level rock, and then, turning, signalled through
the roar of the rapids for his men to come on.
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