With
a fellow trader, Mackay, and six Canadian voyageurs, he pushed up
the Peace and the Parsnip, passed by way of the Fraser and the
Blackwater to the Bella Coola, and thence to the Pacific, the
first white man to cross the northern continent. Paddling for
life through swirling rapids on rivers which rushed madly through
sheer rock-bound canyons, swimming for shore when rock or sand
bar had wrecked the precious bark canoe, struggling over
heartbreaking portages, clinging to the sides of precipices,
contending against hostile Indians and fear-stricken followers,
and at last winning through, Mackenzie summed up what will ever
remain one of the great achievements of exploration in the simple
record, painted in vermilion on a rock in Burke Channel:
Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of
July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three. The first bond
had been woven in the union of East and West. Between the eastern
provinces a stronger link was soon to be forged. The War of 1812
gave the scattered British colonies in America for the first time
a living sense of unity that transcended all differences, a
memory of perils and of victories which nourished a common
patriotism.
The War of 1812 was no quarrel of Canada's. It was merely an
incident in the struggle between England and Napoleon. At
desperate grips, both contestants used whatever weapons lay ready
to their hands.
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