Backyard History : July 22, 1793. From Canada, By Land.

July 22, 1793. DAY 75.

Monday-22--

“This morning the weather was clear and pleasant; nor had anything occurred to disturb us throughout the night. Soon after eight in the morning, I took five altitudes for time…I was determined not to leave this place, except I was absolutely compelled to do it, till I had ascertained its situation...that I would not stir till I had accomplished my object; at the same time, to humour their fears, I consented that they should put everything into the canoe, that we might be in a state of preparation to depart…”

The crew is very agitated and afraid, not to mention hungry, but they have to wait until MacKenzie has completed here what he set out to do.

“I now mixed up some vermilion in melted grease, and inscribed, in large characters, on the South-East face of the rock on which we had slept last night, this brief memorial--”Alexander MacKenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.”

Picture 1. MacKenzie’s Rock

“My altitude, by an artificial horizon, gave 52°21’33”; that by the natural horizon was 52°20’48” North latitude...I had observed an emersion (sic) of Jupiter’s third satellite, which gave 8°32’21. difference of longitude. I then observed an emersion (sic) of Jupiter’s first satellite, which gave 8°32’2. Which is equal to 128.2. West of Greenwich.

The actual latitude of MacKenzie’s Rock is 52° 22’ 46” N. The actual longitude is 127°28’12” W.

“I had now determined my situation, which is the most fortunate circumstance of my long, painful, and perilous journey...As soon as I had completed my observations, we left this place: it was then ten o’clock in the afternoon. We returned the same way we came…”

The journey is over, at least for the purpose of this blog; but it’s not quite over for MacKenzie and his men. He still has to “return the same way we came” and retrace the past 75 days journey all the way back to Fort Fork, where they started this amazing voyage on May 9th; and from there another 500 or so river miles down to Fort Chipewyan, before the brutal winter sets in. The “book” will not be written until he gets back to Britain, and won’t be published for another eight years, in 1801. When it is published, though, he will become knighted for his accomplishments; Sir Alexander MacKenzie will become a celebrity of his time. Other 19th century celebs liked it too; Napoleon loved it so much that he took a french translation with him to his exile in Saint Helena.

This has been an incredible journey for me as well, writing these daily blogs has been a pleasant daily routine, and an incredible learning exercise, on a wide range of topics. Although I’m not going to post the return journey in real-time, I am going to read it, as I’m sure many of you will. I will continue my blog; although probably not daily, so please subscribe to it if you haven’t already. I will definitely be posting more Backyard History. Also, thank you to everyone who has read and followed along on this project. I really appreciate all of the positive comments I have received; but I won’t take much credit for it, because MacKenzie wrote the wonderful words, Google supplied almost all of the photos, maps and of course the Google Earth images, in addition to providing the platform for publishing the blog. As for my own additions and musings, they are my humble opinions, for the most part, and should be treated as such, rather than be accepted as any type of scientific fact. I’m sure I have made many mistakes, and for that I ask for the reader’s understanding, and I hope for the feedback to correct me. I think I did my due diligence, though and there were many “aha!” moments; every time I found a place or a land-mark on Google Earth and it would be just as MacKenzie described it 227 years ago. The preface to his remarkable published work states:

“I have described whatever I saw with the impressions of the moment which presented it to me. The successive circumstances of my progress are related without exaggeration or display. I have seldom allowed myself to wander into conjecture; and whatever conjecture has been indulged, it will be found, I trust, to be accompanied with the temper of a man who is not too disposed to think too highly of himself.”

Hopefully I’ve done the same. MacKenzie has crossed the entire continent, by canoe and on foot, from Montreal to the Dean Channel and tide-water of the Pacific, twelve years before the U.S. Government sponsored Lewis and Clark to cross America overland. In fact they actually used MacKenzie’s journals and maps to help them succeed. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this journey, and also of MacKenzie’s previous 1789 Voyage to the Frozen Sea, is that no one got killed, or died. Not one of his men, his many guides, nor any of the people he came in contact with suffered any fatal injury, accidental death or even drowning. It is his legacy that he never lost a man, caused anyone harm, nor was any blood shed. This was practically unheard of amongst the explorers of his time.

Picture 2. Tourist snaps photo of MacKenzie’s Rock.

Picture 3. MacKenzie’s Rock and Cairn, erected 1926.

The rock near the water’s edge still bears his words, as they were permanently inscribed in the rock by the surveyors who first found it. A prominent 40-foot cairn stands above the rock, and a plaque was erected in 1926 by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.