Recall what was happening now out on the Pacific! Robert Gray was heading home to Boston with news of the discovery of the great river. Vancouver was back from San Francisco carefully charting the inner channel of the coast. Baranoff, the little czar of the Russian traders, was coasting at the head of fifteen hundred 'bidarkies' between the Aleutians and Sitka; and Spain was still sending out ragged pilots to chart the seas which she had not the marine to hold.
The big canoe went on, up the Peace river. Spring thaw brought the waters down from the mountains in turbulent floods, and the precipices narrowed on each side till the current became a foaming cascade. It was one thing to float down-stream with brigades of singing voyageurs and cargoes of furs in spring; it was a different matter to breast the full force of these torrents with only ten men { 75} to paddle. In the big brigades the men paddled in relays. In this canoe each man was expected to pole and paddle continuously and fiercely against a current that was like a mill-race. Mackenzie listened to the grumblers over the night camp-fire, and explained how much safer it was to ascend an unknown stream with bad rapids than to run down it. The danger could always be seen before running into it. He cheered the drooping spirits of his band, and inspired them with some of his own indomitable courage.
By May 16 the river had narrowed to a foaming cataract; and the banks were such sheer rock-wall that it was almost impossible to land. They had arrived at the Rocky Mountain Portage, as it was afterwards called. It was clear that the current could not be stemmed by pole or paddle; the canoe must be towed or carried. When Mackenzie tried to get foothold or handhold on the shore, huge boulders and land-slides of loose earth slithered down, threatening to smash canoe and canoemen. Mackenzie got out a tow-line eighty feet long. This he tied to the port thwart of the canoe. With the tow-line round his shoulders, while the torrent roared { 76} past and filled the canyon with the 'voice of many waters,' Mackenzie leaped to the dangerous slope, cut foothold and handhold on the face of the cliff with an axe, and scrambled up to a table of level rock. Then he shouted and signalled for his men to come up. If the voyageurs had not been hemmed in by a boiling maelstrom on both sides, they would have deserted on the spot. Mackenzie saw them begin to strip as if to swim; then, clothes on back and barefoot, they scrambled up the treacherous shore. He reached over, and assisted them to the level ground above. The tow-line was drawn taut round trees and the canoe tracked up the raging current. But the rapids became wilder. A great wave struck the bow of the canoe and the tow-line snapped in mid-air. The terrified men looking over the edge of the precipice saw their craft sidle as if to swamp; but, on the instant, another mighty wave flung her ashore, and they were able to haul her out of danger.