In 1791 he returned to Great Britain to study the new advances in the measurement of longitude. Upon his return in 1792 he set out once again to find a route to the Pacific. Accompanied by native guides and French voyageurs, Mackenzie left Fort Fork following the route of the Peace River. He found the upper reaches of the Fraser River, but was warned by the local natives that the lower portion of the river was unnavigable and populated by belligerent tribes.[1] He was instead directed to follow an established trading route by ascending the West Road River, crossing over the Coast Mountains, and descending the Bella Coola River to the sea. He followed this advice and reached the Pacific coast on July 20, 1793 at Bella Coola, British Columbia, on North Bentinck Arm, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. Thus, he completed the first recorded transcontinental crossing of North America by a European north of Mexico, in the process crossing the Continental Divide. He had wanted to continue westward out of a desire to encounter the open Ocean, but was turned back by the hostility of the Nuxalk nation. The expedition of George Vancouver had visited Bella Coola 48 days before. At his westernmost point on Dean Channel, (on July 22, 1793), hemmed in by Nuxalk war canoes, he inscribed "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three!" on a rock using a reddish paint made of vermilion and bear grease, and turned around to return to "Canada".[2]:418 The rock, near the water's edge in Dean Channel, still bears similar words, which were permanently inscribed later by surveyors. The site is now Sir Alexander Mackenzie Provincial Park.
Inscription at the end of the Alexander Mackenzie's Canada crossing located at 52°22′43″N,127°28′14″W[3]
^ Morton, Arthur S; (Lewis G Thomas) [1939] (1973). A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71, 2nd ed, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-4033-0.
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