partners in Montreal. Their rivalry wakened the sleepy Hudson's
Bay Company, which was now forced to leave the shores of the
inland sea and build posts in the interior.

* It is interesting to note the dominant share taken in the trade
and exploration of the North and West by men of Highland Scotch
and French extraction. For an account of La Verendrye see "The
Conquest of New France" and for the Scotch fur traders of
Montreal see "Adventurers of Oregon" (in "The Chronicles of
America").


On the Pacific coast rivalry was still keener. The sea otter and
the seal were a lure to the men of many nations. Canada took its
part in this rivalry. In 1792, when the Russians were pressing
down from their Alaskan posts, when the Spaniards, claiming the
Pacific for their own, were exploring the mouth of the Fraser,
when Captain Robert Gray of Boston was sailing up the mighty
Columbia, and Captain Vancouver was charting the northern coasts
for the British Government, a young North-West Company factor,
Alexander Mackenzie, in his lonely post on Lake Athabaska, was
planning to cross the wilderness of mountains to the coast. 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,