Their trade route crossed the upper lakes to Thunder Bay in Lake Superior, where they built Fort William; thence by Rainy River to the Lake of the Woods, and Rat Portage; thence up Lake Winnipeg to the Grand Saskatchewan. There were the forts where buffalo hunters boiled down pemmican, a sort of pressed beef spiced with service berries, to feed the northern posts. Northward the long trail, by lake and river, reached à la Crosse, which gave its name to a famous Indian ball game, and so to the source of the Churchill River at Lac la Loche, from whence the Methye portage opened the way into the Great Unknown. When MacKenzie reached Clear-water River, Mr. Peter Pond of the Nor’westers had just shot Mr. Ross of the X. Y. Company. MacKenzie took charge, and he and his cousin moved the trade down to the meeting of the Athabasca and the Peace, at an inland sea, the Athabasca Lake, where they built the future capital of the North, Fort Chipewyan. From here the Slave River ran down to Great Slave Lake, a second inland sea whose outlet was unknown. MacKenzie found that outlet six miles wide. The waters teemed with wild fowl, the bush with deer, and the plains on either side had herds of bison. MacKenzie took with him four French voyageurs, a German and some Indians, working them as a rule from three A. M. till dusk, while they all with one accord shied at the terrors ahead, the cataracts, the savage tribes, the certainty of starvation. The days lengthened until there was no night, they passed coal fields on fire which a hundred years later were still burning, then frozen ground covered with grass and flowers, where the river parted into three main branches opening on the coast of an ice-clad sea. The water was still fresh, but there were seaweeds, they saw whales, the tides would wash the people out of camp, for this was the Arctic Ocean. So they turned back up that great river which bears MacKenzie’s name, six thousand miles of navigable waters draining a land so warm that wheat will ripen on the Arctic circle, a home for millions of healthy prosperous people in the days to come.