When Alexander Mackenzie, the fair-haired, blue-eyed lad of sixteen arrived in Canada, he had very little money in his pocket. But he did have good looks, a strong body, and a lightning-quick mind.
Within a very few years he was a prosperous fur trader with headquarters on remote Lake Athabasca. And it was from this vantage point that he made two great exploring expeditions, one down the river that now bears his name to the Arctic Ocean, and the other up the Peace River to the Rocky Mountains, over the Great Divide, and down other streams to the Pacific—having discovered the first canoe route to the Western Sea.
Dangerous Indians who had never before seen a white man, grizzly bears, roaring cascades, bitter cold, near starvation, and other perils beset these ten men and a dog in their big birchbark canoe as they made their way through a totally unknown and unmapped wilderness.
But Alexander Mackenzie, with the stubborn integrity of his race, and with the courage of a mountain lion, led and pushed his expedition onward. He lived to be knighted, and to gain fame as an author as well as an explorer. But for many months there was a very good chance that he would not live for another hour.
Anyone who starts reading this book will be unable to put it down until he has reached the satisfying final pages of a great life story.
—from the dust jacket
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