to obtain another guide by persuasion, seized and hoisted a protesting savage into the big canoe, and signalled the unwilling captive to point the way.  The Indians of the river were indifferent, if not friendly; but once Mackenzie discovered a band hiding their women and children as soon as the boatmen came in view.  The unwilling guide was forced ashore, as interpreter, and gifts pacified all fear.  But the incident left its impression on Mackenzie’s comrades.  They had now been away from Chipewyan for forty days.  If it took much longer to go back, ice would imprison them in the polar wilderness.  Snow lay drifted in the valleys, and scarcely any game was seen but fox and grouse.  The river was widening almost to the dimensions of a lake, and when this was whipped by a north wind the canoes were in peril enough.  The four Canadians besought Mackenzie to return.  To return Mackenzie had not the slightest intention; but he would not tempt mutiny.  He promised that if he did not find the sea within seven days, he would go back.

That night the sun hung so high above the southern horizon that the men rose by mistake to embark at twelve o’clock.  They did not realize that they were in the region of midnight sun; but Mackenzie knew and rejoiced, for he must be near the sea.  The next day he was not surprised to find a deserted Eskimo village.  At that sight the enthusiasm of the others took fire.  They were keen to reach the sea, and imagined that they smelt salt water.  In spite of the lakelike expanse of the river, the current was swift, and the canoes went ahead at the rate of sixty and seventy miles a day—­if it could be called day when there was no night.  Between the 13th and 14th of July the voyageurs suddenly awakened to find themselves and their baggage floating in rising water.  What had happened to the lake?  Their hearts took a leap; for it was no lake.  It was the tide.  They had found the sea.

How hilariously jubilant were Mackenzie’s men, one may guess from the fact that they chased whales all the next day in their canoes.  The whales dived below, fortunately; for one blow of a finback or sulphur bottom would have played skittles with the canoes.  Coming back from the whale hunt, triumphant as if they had caught a dozen finbacks, the men erected a post, engraving on it the date, July 14, 1789, and the names of all present.

It had taken six weeks to reach the Arctic.  It took eight to return to Chipewyan, for the course was against stream, in many places tracking the canoes by a tow-line.  The beaver meadows along the shore impeded the march.  Many a time the quaking moss gave way, and the men sank to mid-waist in water.  While skirting close ashore, Mackenzie discovered the banks of the river to be on fire.  The fire was a natural tar bed, which the Indians said had been burning for centuries and which burns to-day as when Mackenzie found it.  On September 12, with a high sail up and a driving wind, the canoes cut across Lake Athabasca and reached the beach of Chipewyan at three in the afternoon, after one hundred and two days’ absence.  Mackenzie had not found the Northwest Passage.  He had proved there was no Northwest Passage, and discovered the Mississippi of the north—­Mackenzie River.