The Pioneers

Introduces the King of Pioneers

Discarding space and ignoring time, we seize you by the hand, reader, and bound away with you still deeper into the northern wilderness, away into that remote region which, at the time we write of, was the ultima thule of the fur-traders of Canada,—beyond which lay the great unknown world, stretching to the pole. Here, amid the grand scenery of the Rocky Mountains, lies the Athabasca Lake, also styled the Lake of the Hills. We prefer the latter name, as being more romantic.

This is no pretty pond such as we in England are wont to visit and delight in during our summer holidays. It is a great sheet of water; a grand fresh-water sea, 200 miles long and 15 miles broad—a fitting gem for the bosom of the mighty region on which it glitters.

A year has fled since the period of our last chapter, and here, in a birch-bark canoe on the waters of the Lake of the Hills, we find our pioneers—Reuben Guff, his son Lawrence, and his Indian friend Swiftarrow. There is also a young Indian woman in the canoe—Swiftarrow’s wife.

The kind-hearted red man adopted the old woman who had been rescued on their previous trip, but, not finding her a good substitute for his own mother, he bethought him of adding a young squaw to his establishment. While he meditated on this step, the old woman died. About the same time Reuben Guff made proposals to him to join him on a second “v’yage of diskivery.” The Indian agreed; got married off-hand, and took his bride along with him. We now find them all four at the Lake of the Hills.

It may be as well to observe, in passing, that Indian brides are usually more robust than those of civilised communities. They are quite competent to follow their lords on the most arduous canoe voyages, and, besides being able to wield the paddle with great dexterity, are exceedingly useful in managing what may be styled the domestic matters of the camp. They also keep up a constant supply of the Indian’s indispensable foot-gear—moccasins—which are so slender in their nature that a pair may be completely worn-out in a single day of hard hunting.

The brown bride, therefore, was not a hindrance to the party, but a useful member of it, as well as a pleasant companion. True, her companionship consisted chiefly in answering “yes” and “no” when spoken to, and in smiling pleasantly at all times; but this was sufficient to satisfy the moderate demands of her male friends upon her intellectual resources.

“Fort Chipewyan at last,” said Reuben, resting his paddle across the canoe and looking earnestly towards the horizon; “I hope we ain’t too late after all our pushin’ on. It would be hard to find that Monsieur Mackenzie had started.”

“Too much ice in the lake,” said Swiftarrow. “He has not gone yet.”

“I’m not so sure o’ that,” observed Lawrence. “If reports be true, Monsieur Mackenzie is not the man to wait until the ice is all off the lakes and nothin’ but plain sailin’ lies before him.”

“That’s true, lad,” replied Reuben, resuming his paddle. “I wonder,” he murmured to himself, as he gazed wistfully towards the unknown north, “I wonder if the big river is really there, an’ if it do jine the sea?”

That same question was put to himself that same evening—though not for the first time—by one of the inhabitants of Fort Chipewyan. The fort was a mere group of two or three log-huts. In the largest of these huts sat a man whose strongly-marked handsome countenance gave evidence of a bold enterprising spirit and a resolute will. He pored over a map for some time, carefully tracing a few pencil-lines into the blank spaces on the paper, and then murmured, in words which were almost identical with those of Reuben Guff, “I wonder if it joins the Polar Sea?”

This man was the true pioneer, or, rather, the king of pioneers, to whom Guff gave place without a murmur, for Reuben was a modest man; and the moment he heard that one of the gentlemen of the Canadian fur-trading company had taken up his favourite hobby, and meant to work out the problem, he resolved, as he said, “to play second fiddle,” all the more that the man who thus unwittingly supplanted him was a mountaineer of the Scottish Highlands.

“It’s of no manner of use, you see,” he said to Swiftarrow, when conversing on the subject, “for me to go off on a v’yage o’ diskivery w’en a gentleman like Monsieur Mackenzie, with a good edication an’ scienteefic knowledge and the wealth of a fur company at his back, is goin’ to take it in hand. No; the right thing for Reuben Guff to do in the circumstances is to jine him an’ play second fiddle—or third, if need be.”

Alexander Mackenzie—while seated in the lowly hut of that solitary outpost poring over his map, trying to penetrate mentally into those mysterious and unknown lands which lay just beyond him—saw, in imagination, a great river winding its course among majestic mountains towards the shores of the ice-laden polar seas. He also saw the lofty peaks and snow-clad ridges of that mighty range which forms the back-bone of the American continent, and—again in imagination—passed beyond it and penetrated the vast wilderness to the Pacific, thus adding new lands to the British Crown, and opening up new sources of wealth to the fur company of which he was one of the most energetic members. He saw all this in imagination, we say, but he did not, at that time, see his name attached to one of the largest American rivers, classed with the names of the most noted discoverers of the world, and himself knighted. Still less, if possible, did he see, even in his wildest flights of fancy, that the book of travels which he was destined to write, would be translated into French by the order of Napoleon the First, for the express purpose of being studied by Marshal Bernadotte, with the view of enabling that warrior to devise a roundabout and unlooked-for attack on Canada—in rear, as it were—from the region of the northern wilderness—a fact which is well worthy of record! (See Appendix for an interesting letter on the subject.)

None of these things loomed on the mind of the modest though romantic and enterprising man, for at that time he was only at the beginning of his career of discovery.

It may not be out of place here to say a word or two as to the early career of the hero whose footsteps we are about to follow.

He was a Highlander, to begin with; and possessed all the fire and determination peculiar to that race. At an early period of life he was led to engage in commercial enterprises in the country north-west of Lake Superior, joined the North-West Fur Company of Canada in 1784, and went into the Indian country the following spring. It is not necessary to say more than that Alexander Mackenzie proved himself to be a first-rate fur-trader at a time when the fur-trade was carried on under great difficulties and amid severe privations. For many years he was in charge of Fort Chipewyan, the remote establishment to which we have just conducted our reader. Seven years before his coming on the scene, the Lake of the Hills had not been visited by white men, and was known only through Indian report. When Mackenzie became ruler of the district, all beyond the lake was terra incognita. His spirit was one which thirsted to explore the unknown. He was eminently fitted both to hold an advanced post and to invade new regions, being robust in constitution, powerful in frame, inquisitive in mind, and enterprising in spirit. Frequently had he arrived at Fort Chipewyan with ninety or a hundred men without any provision for their sustenance for the winter save their fishing-nets and guns. He was therefore accustomed to live from hand to mouth, and to depend on his own exertions and resources in a country where the winter is upwards of eight months long and the severity of the climate extreme.

It was in June 1789 that he made preparations to start on his first voyage of discovery.

Rising from the table at which he had been studying his projected route, Mackenzie turned, with the air of a man who has made up his mind, and said to a clerk who was smoking beside the fireplace—