He first moved up from Fort Chipewyan to the east foot of the mountains, so as to get a better start. He wintered here. In the spring (1793), he was ready to set out again. One large, strong canoe, which held all the provisions, and which two men could carry with ease, enabled the travellers to work their slow and toilsome way up the swollen mountain torrents into the highest defiles, from which they sprung. As the explorers advanced, the stream they were ascending became more and more choked up with rocks or fallen trees, and more and more broken by cascades and rapids. It was often necessary to carry the canoe round or drag it over these obstructions, though at the cost of such toil that the men grew disheartened and wished to turn back, thinking the task a hopeless one. Unsparing of himself, Mackenzie put courage into the downhearted, and after a short rest all were ready to go on again. [Illustration: INDIAN MASK, WEST COAST.] Falling, at length, among the Indians who dwelt among the mountains, Mackenzie found that the rest of the journey would be much shortened by leaving his canoes and proceeding by land. He therefore continued his way by land, constantly meeting with natives who lived sumptuously on the salmon that the streams everywhere produced in great abundance and perfection. Mackenzie soon found he had nothing to fear from these people. They fed and sheltered his men in their villages, and willingly helped him on his way. The fatigues and anxieties of the journey were nearly past, for on the 23d of July, 1793, the party of white men arrived on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, near the Straits of Fuca. Although, in relating the adventures of Mackenzie, we have gone somewhat before our story, the doing so is essential to its design, as subsequent chapters will show. FOOTNOTE [1] FORT CHIPEWYAN was at the foot of ATHABASCA LAKE, midway between the mountains and Hudson's Bay. THE RUSSIANS IN ALASKA. "_Heaven is high and the Czar distant._" Referring to what Drake had done for England, and De Fuca for Spain, the one tacking a name to the coast here, the other there, we find little for more than a century going to show that Europeans thought the discoveries of either worth following up. What do we then see? Not Spain, not England putting forth a steady hand to grasp the prize each already claimed as its own, but a new power, coming not from the East, but from the West. It is a power hardly known in Europe. It is Russia. [Illustration: SEALS, ST. PAUL'S ISLAND.] The Czar Peter, Peter the Great in history, determined to know whether the two grand continents, Asia and America, were joined in one, or separated by a northern ocean. Peter died before the orders given for this purpose could be carried out, but Catherine, his empress and successor, sent Captain Behring[1] of the royal navy to execute them.