Mackenzie River

Mackenzie River, in North America, has its origin, as the Athabasca (q.v.), in a Rocky Mountain lake in British Columbia, flows over 600 miles to Lake Athabasca, and 240 as the Slave River to Great Slave Lake (q.v.). It now assumes the name of Mackenzie River, and conveys the waters of the Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean at Mackenzie Bay, after a final course which is reckoned at 1045 miles, making a total river-system of nearly 2500 sq. m. It drains an area of little less than 600,000 sq. m. The mouth of the river is closed from October to June by ice. The Mackenzie district itself is desolate and unfit for colonisation; but its great tributaries, the Liard and the Peace and Athabasca rivers, drain an immense fertile country, with abundance of petroleum (the fields have been reported the largest in the world), and some coal and lignite. The Mackenzie received its name from Sir Alexander Mackenzie (c. 1755-1820), by whom it was discovered in 1789. Sir John Franklin (q.v.) descended it in 1825. Since 1895 it gives name to a new north-west territory of Canada.