Mackenzie, Alexander:

$6,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

VOYAGES FROM MONTREAL ON THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE, THROUGH THE CONTINENT OF NORTH AMERICA, TO THE FROZEN AND PACIFIC OCEANS; IN THE YEARS 1789 AND 1793. WITH A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF THE FUR TRADE OF ... Alexander Mackenzie was "the first white man to cross the continent and his journal...is of surpassing interest" (Wagner-Camp). The present work is the first published account of the two exploring expeditions that Mackenzie made on behalf of the North West Company as part of their attempt to break the Hudson's Bay Company's stranglehold on the fur trade. The author was born in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland in 1764, came to North America in 1774, was employed as a clerk in the fur trade in 1779, and by 1787 he was a wintering partner in the North West Company, posted at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca.Mackenzie set out on his first expedition on June 3, 1789, armed with information and maps provided by fur trader Peter Pond. He had decided to follow a large river flowing west from Great Slave Lake in search of a northwest passage to the Pacific. The expedition was partially successful: on July 13, Mackenzie and his party reached salt water, but it proved to be the Beaufort Sea rather than the Pacific Ocean.After a further two years in the fur trade in Canada, Mackenzie returned to England in the autumn of 1791 to study navigation and astronomy, as the first expedition had demonstrated to him that he needed more expertise in these areas. He returned to Canada in the spring of 1

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