In 1793 Sir Alexander Mackenzie completed the first crossing of the North American continent, more than a decade before Lewis and Clark. Although overshadowed by the latter expedition, Mackenzie's journey was one of the great feats in the history of exploration. With a small party of French-Canadian voyageurs, the explorer traversed some of the most forbidding terrain on the continent, including the Rocky Mountains, and reached the Dean Channel on the Pacific coast of British Columbia on July 22. Although Mackenzie's actual journal of the trek has been lost, a book based on it appeared in 1801. It has long been recognized by authorities as a primary document of western Americana. Until the first publication of the present volume, however, Mackenzie's book had never been published in a properly annotated edition. Walter Sheppe not only edited and annotated Mackenzie's text, he personally retraced much of the explorer's route, adding an extra dimension of personal experience to his preparation of this volume. The result is a rich chronicle of a remarkable journey, replete with Mackenzie's firsthand accounts of extraordinary places (many still as inaccessible as in 1793), and a wealth of invaluable observations on Indian tribes, plants, wildlife and other aspects of the expedition. In addition, Mr. Sheppe has provided a brief outline of the explorer's life, a detailed day-to-day itinerary of the journey, his own field notes when he retraced Mackenzie's steps and a discussion of the journal's provenance. - Back cover.