There was no mistaking. This was the
sea--the Western Sea, that for three hundred years had baffled all
search overland, and led the world's greatest explorers on a chase of a
will-o'-the-wisp. What Cartier and La Salle and La Verendrye failed to
do, Mackenzie had accomplished.
But Mackenzie's position was not to be envied. Ten starving men on a
barbarous coast had exactly twenty pounds of pemmican, fifteen of rice,
six of flour. Of ammunition there was scarcely any. Between home and
their leaky canoe lay half a continent of wilderness and mountains.
The next day was spent coasting the cove for a place to take
observations. Canoes of savages met the white men, and one impudent
fellow kept whining out that he had once been shot at by men of
Mackenzie's color. Mackenzie took refuge for the night on an isolated
rock which was barely large enough for his party to gain a foothold.
The savages hung about pestering the boatmen for gifts. Two white men
kept guard, while the rest slept. On Monday, when Mackenzie was
setting up his instruments, his young Indian guide came, foaming at the
mouth from terror, with news that the coast tribes were to attack the
white men by hurling spears at the unsheltered rock. The boatmen lost
their heads and were for instant flight, anywhere, everywhere, in a
leaky canoe that would have foundered a mile out at sea. Mackenzie did
not stir, but ordered fusees primed and the canoe gummed. Mixing up a
pot of vermilion, he painted in large letters on the face of the rock
where they had passed the night:--
"Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July,
one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.
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