He borrowed canoes for the run down the Bilthqula to Salt Water at the head of one of British Columbia’s giant fiords. There the explorer heard that only two moons ago Captain Vancouver’s boats had been in the inlet. An Indian chief must have been rude, for one officer fired upon him, while another struck him with the flat of a sword. For this the chief must needs get even with Alexander MacKenzie as he wandered about the channels in search of the open sea. He never found the actual Pacific, but made his final camp upon a rock at the entrance of Cascada inlet. Here is Vancouver’s description of the place. “The width of the channel did not anywhere exceed three-quarters of a mile; its shores were bounded by precipices much more perpendicular than any we had yet seen during this excursion; and from the summits of the mountains that overlooked it ... there fell several large cascades. These were extremely grand, and by much the most tremendous of any we had ever beheld.” Those cataracts, like lace, fell from the cornice glaciers through belt after belt of clouds, to crash through the lower gloom in deafening thunder upon black abysmal channels. The eagles swirl and circle far above, the schools of porpoises are cleaving and gleaming through the white-maned tide. In such a place, beset by hostile Indians, as the dawn broke the great explorer mixed vermilion and grease to paint upon the precipice above him: “Alexander MacKenzie, from Canada by land 22nd July, 1793.” He had discovered one of the world’s great rivers, and made the first crossing of North America. XLV THE WHITE MAN’S COMING It is our plain duty here to take up the story of Vancouver, an English merchant seaman from before the mast, who rose to a captaincy in the royal navy, and was sent to explore the British Columbian coast. He was to find “the Straits of Anian leading through Meta Incognita to the Atlantic,” the famous Northwest passage for which so many hundreds of explorers gave their lives. His careful survey proved there was no such strait. Of course it is our duty to follow Vancouver’s dull and pompous log book, and show what savage tribes he met with in the wilds. But it will be much more fun to give the other side, the story of Vancouver’s visit as told by the Indians whose awful fate it was to be “discovered” by the white man with his measles, his liquor and his smallpox.