. Pathfinders of the West; being the thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the great Northwest. life presents even more dramatic clerk in a counting-house at Montreal one year,the next finds him at Detroit setting out for the back-woods of Michigan to barter with Indians for furs. Then he is off with a fleetof canoes forty strong forthe Upper Country of forestand wilderness beyond theGreat Lakes, where hefights such a desperatebattle with rivals that oneof his companions is mur-dered, a second lamed, athird wounded. In all thisAlexander Mackenzie wassuccessful
. Pathfinders of the West; being the thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the great Northwest. life presents even more dramatic clerk in a counting-house at Montreal one year,the next finds him at Detroit setting out for the back-woods of Michigan to barter with Indians for furs. Then he is off with a fleetof canoes forty strong forthe Upper Country of forestand wilderness beyond theGreat Lakes, where hefights such a desperatebattle with rivals that oneof his companions is mur-dered, a second lamed, athird wounded. In all thisAlexander Mackenzie wassuccessful while still in theprime of his manhood,— Alexander Mackenzie, from a Paint- not more than thirty yearsin? of the Explorer, r. , , j r or age ; and the reward orhis success was to be exiled to the sub-arctics of theAthabasca, six weeks travel from another fur post, —not a likely field to play the hero. Yet Mackenzieemerged from the polar wilderness bearing a namethat ranks with Columbus and Cartier and La north of the Missouri beyond the borderlandsflows the Saskatchewan. As far north again, beyond. FIRST ACROSS THE ROCKIES 277 the Saskatchewan, flows another great river, the Atha--basca, into Athabasca Lake, on whose blue shoresto the north lies a little white-washed fort of sometwenty log houses, large barn-like stores, a Catholicchapel, an Episcopal mission, and a biggish residence ofpretence for the chief trader. This is h]ort certain seasons Indian tepees dot the surroundingplains; and bronze-faced savages, clad in the ill-fittinggarments of white people, shamble about the stores,or sit haunched round the shady sides of the loghouses, smoking long-stemmed pipes. These are theChipewyans come in from their hunting-grounds ; butfor the most part the fort seems chiefly populated byregiments of husky dogs, shaggy-coated, with the sharpnose of the fox, which spend the long winters in harnesscoasting the white wilderness, and pass the summersbasking laz
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherlondonmacmillancol
