LIX.

OF DISCOVERY.

CIIA P. Mr. Mackenzie and his guides towards the centre of the Northern Continent to Chepewyan on the VOYAGES South side of the "Lake of the Hills." There, in a canoe constructed of birch bark, he commenced his voyage of discovery. First he steered into and around another vast expanse which is called the "Great Slave Lake," and which even then, in the month of June, was for the most part frozen over. Here he suffered from another hardship, which at first sight might be deemed scarcely consistent with the former. "We were pestered," says he, "by musquitoes, though in a great measure sur"rounded by ice." From this lake he entered a river flowing northward, which received from him, and which still retains, his own name of Mackenzie. "The current," he remarks, "is very strong, and "the banks are covered with large quantities of "burned wood, lying on the ground, and young

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poplar trees that have sprung up since the fire "that destroyed the larger wood. It is a very "curious and extraordinary circumstance that land "covered with spruce pine and white birch, when "laid waste by fire, should subsequently produce "nothing but poplars where none of that species "of tree were previously to be found."*

Proceeding on his voyage, Mackenzie allowed himself during the day to be carried forward by the stream, but at night he always landed and set up his tents until the dawn, justly dreading the

Mackenzie's Journal, June 19. and 29. 1789.

LIX.

OF DIS

COVERY.

perils of falls and rapids as well as many others in CHAP. a tract of country as yet wholly new to Europeans. The Indians of his party provided food by fishing, VOYAGES shooting, or hunting: this, however, was not his sole reliance, as he had some store in his canoe. Large, indeed, were the daily supplies which he required. According to his own account, his party, consisting of ten men and four women, had, within a period of six days, consumed two reindeer, four swans, forty-five geese, and a considerable quantity of fish! "I have always observed," adds Mackenzie, "that the North-men possessed very hearty appetites, but they were very much "exceeded by those with me, since we entered "this river; and I should really have thought it "absolute gluttony in my people, if my own appe"tite had not increased in a similar proportion." Among the fish which they caught most frequently was one well known to the Canadians, but still retaining among them the name which the first discoverers had given it: POISSON INCONNU.

At length, in July, 1789, after many hundred miles of navigation, the courageous perseverance of Mackenzie was rewarded, as he saw by degrees the river widen, and the Arctic Sea expand. So thickly was the ice piled along the coasts as to leave him for some time still uncertain whether that were indeed the ocean to which his course had tended; and his doubts were first dispelled by the sudden appearance in the current of huge white masses, which he dis

OF DISCOVERY.

CHAP. covered to be a troop of whales.* Toilsome as LIX. had been his progress, he found his return a matter VOYAGES of still far more labour and fatigue, since his canoe had to mount against a strong stream, which required constant exertion of paddling or of tracking with a line on shore. In one part of the river, where the breadth from bank to bank did not exceed three hundred yards, the depth of water was no less than fifty fathoms. †

It may be said with truth, both of the voyage of Mackenzie and the journey of Hearne, that as regarding the Arctic Circle, no discoveries in that age tended more to the progress of discovery in ours. Proving as they did that the North American Continent by no means, as some persons had supposed, extended to the Pole, but was bounded by a Polar Sea, they revived the hopes of a Northwest passage, and animated the exertions of a Parry or a Franklin. In these men the spirit of Cook and Hearne was in our own day worthily renewed. But to these men that spirit was not confined. In every part of the world that spirit has been displayed. Not merely in the Tropic islands, where safe within their coral-reefs, the islanders may

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"The part of them which appeared above the water was altogether white. . . . At first we supposed them to be pieces "of ice." (Journal, July 14. 1789.)

...

†This narrative of the voyage of Mackenzie, as also of another undertaken by him three years afterwards to the western coast of North America, was published by himself in 1801. A good summary of both appears in the Annual Register for that year. (p. 545-558.)

not CHAP.

LIX.

OF DIS

listen to the outer Ocean's roaring surges merely in the realm of eternal winter, where even the restless surges are bound fast by frost-but VOYAGES through the burning sands of Africa, the marshy COVERY. jungles of Siam, or the tangled brush-woods of New South Wales - wherever the keel can glide, the sledge draw, or the camel carry, or the unassisted human footstep tread-in every clime, and on every soil, wherever in the quest of knowledge or of conquest there is glory to be won, there the indomitable spirit of Anglo-Saxon enterprise has overcome most obstacles, and is striving against all.

CHAPTER LX.

LITERATURE AND ART.

LX.

TURE AND

ART.

CHAP. IT seems no unfair pretension that some place in History, however humble, should be allotted to LITERA Historians. Those who have successfully chro nicled great deeds, ought not themselves to be left unchronicled. On this supposition the Literature of the period now before us may deserve especial notice, since, so far as historical writers are concerned, it was in truth our Golden Era. Besides several of less distinction, as Dr. Watson and Lord Lyttleton, it comprised the three eminent names of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon.

Of these three it is remarkable that two were natives of Mid-Lothian. David Hume was born at Edinburgh in 1711. He first attracted public favour such was then the temper of the times— by a volume of sceptical Essays. These, if they did not induce, at least did not prevent, the choice which the Faculty of Advocates made of him for their Librarian. In that office he received little or no emolument, but had at his command a large

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