The Journals of Alexander MacKenzie: Exploring Across ... (ISBN 1589760360)

north by northwest, 2 miles. then south by southeast 1.2 miles...etc. etc.:
if you like reading that kind of stuff for a page an a half - interrupted by the description of some exciting episode for maybe a paragraph, only to return to the endless and minute directional footnotes of the journey, then this book is for you! moreover, if you like to know the distance of every carrying-place from Churchill to the Great Slave lake, then this book is definitely for you! while I enjoyed some parts of the book immensely, I cannot but feel that it was written in way too much detail, and probably for a different audience. perhaps an abridged version of Mackenzie's journals are in order. Scott, Francis, while they may not have been great explorers (let's face it - they both perished and cost the lives of many of their companions through their sheer incompetence), were nonetheless great writers, that knew how to relate to their audience - both then and now. by comparison, Mackenzie is as dry as the bones of an old nag that died in the Arizona dessert a hundred years ago.