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Title: David Thompson, the explorer

Author: Charles Norris Cochrane

Editor: W. Stewart Wallace

Release date: November 27, 2022 [eBook #69432]
                Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: Canada: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID THOMPSON, THE EXPLORER ***

[Illustration: THIS MAP WILL HELP YOU TO UNDERSTAND (left half)]



[Illustration: DAVID THOMPSON'S JOURNEYS (right half)]



  CANADIAN MEN OF ACTION--NUMBER II.

  The Series edited by W. Stewart Wallace, Librarian
  of the University of Toronto.


  DAVID THOMPSON




  DAVID THOMPSON

  THE EXPLORER

  BY

  CHARLES NORRIS COCHRANE

  Associate Professor of Ancient History,
  University College, Toronto



  TORONTO
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
  1924




  Copyright, Canada, 1924

  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED


  Printed in Canada




PREFATORY NOTE

I wish to acknowledge the great debt which I owe to Mr. J. B. Tyrrell
for the use of material contained in his edition of Thompson's
_Narrative_.

It was Mr. Tyrrell who first rescued the name of Thompson from the
undeserved oblivion into which it had sunk.  Those who are familiar
with his introduction and notes, will recognize how largely I have
borrowed from them in preparing this short life.

C. N. C.

June 1924.




CONTENTS


I APPRENTICED TO THE COMPANY 1770-1786

II HE FINDS HIS MÉTIER 1786-1791

III TRADER, SURVEYOR, EXPLORER 1791-1797

IV WITH THE NORTH-WESTERS 1797-1798

V EIGHT YEARS OF TRADING 1798-1806

VI ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE 1806-1810

VII THE RACE TO THE SEA 1810-1812

VIII LAST YEARS 1812-1857




DAVID THOMPSON



CHAPTER I

APPRENTICED TO THE COMPANY

On the 30th of December, 1783, the Governors of the Grey Coat School
at Westminster, England, received from the secretary of the Hudson's
Bay Company a request for four boys, trained in navigation, to be
apprenticed to the Company for service at their posts in America.  At
that time, there were in the school but two boys so qualified--Samuel
John McPherson and David Thompson.  The one was so terrified by the
prospect of perils and hardships unknown, that within a week he ran
away from the school and was heard of no more.  The other accepted
the destiny for which he had been marked out, and became one of the
greatest land surveyors that the British race has ever produced.

When David Thompson was called before the Headmaster to be informed
of his fate, he was in his fourteenth year, and had been for nearly
seven years a pupil in the school.  No description exists of the poor
charity boy as he then was; but from accounts given of him in later
life, it is possible to imagine his appearance.  Though he was short
of stature, his sturdy frame already gave promise of the strength
that was to enable him to drive his canoe through the currents and
eddies of the western waterways, or trudge at the head of his men
across the plains in the teeth of a December blizzard.  His
complexion was ruddy, though his smooth cheeks were not as yet tanned
and furrowed by a life of exposure to the sun and wind of the great
North West.  The straight, black hair which hung down over his
forehead combined with a stub nose to give him an odd look.  Yet
there must have been already evident, in his expression, the
animation and kindliness which in after years distinguished him, and
suggested at once the boldness and fire of Curran the Irish orator,
and the strength and piety of the puritan Bunyan, both of whom he is
said to have greatly resembled.

Thompson's parents were Welsh, and had borne the name of ApThomas
until they had come to live in London.  It was there in the parish of
St. John the Evangelist, that David was born on the last day of
April, in the year 1770.  While yet a mere child, he was left an
orphan by the death of his father.  So poor was the family that the
dead man had to be buried at the expense of the parish, and the
widow, with David and a still younger infant, was left alone to face
the hardships of life in the metropolis.  The boy, however, must have
shown unusual promise; because, while still quite young, he attracted
the attention of a certain Abram Acworth.  Through the recommendation
of this otherwise unknown benefactor, he was at the age of seven
accepted as a scholar by the Governors of the Grey Coat School.

The Grey Coat School was a royal foundation "the principall designe
of which" was "to educate poor children in the principles of piety
and virtue, and thereby lay the foundations for a sober and Christian
life".  Almost within the shadow of Westminster Abbey, the old
building is still to be seen---a red brick house, built in the
Elizabethan manner, its walls covered with grape-vine and Virginia
creeper, standing in the midst of a large garden and playground.

In the school, Thompson found himself a member of the class in
mathematics, and received such training in geography, algebra,
mechanics, and the art of navigation as was possible with the aid of
texts, many of which were at that time a century old.  In those days
books were scarce and dear; and, for their general reading, the boys
had to be satisfied with such miscellaneous works as came their way.
These were passed eagerly from hand to hand, and as eagerly read and
discussed.  Youthful imaginations were excited by the romantic
adventures of the Persian and Arabian tales, or by the travels of
Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver in strange lands and among strange
peoples.

Within five minutes' walk of the school was the Abbey and its
cloisters.  His hours of recreation David spent mainly in wandering
through the venerable pile, reading the history of England on the
monuments of her heroic dead, and drinking in the beauty of the
architecture, especially that of the noble Henry VII Chapel.  On
other occasions, when chance offered, he would stroll through the
Strand and Fleet Street as far east as London Bridge or westward to
Chelsea, rich in historical memories and famous for its beautiful
lawns.  Other favourite haunts were St. James' Park and Spring
Gardens in Vauxhall, across the Thames.  Forty years of wandering
through rock and forest, by plain and mountain, served merely to
render yet more vivid his boyish recollection of the city and its
parks "where all was beauty to the eye and verdure to the feet."

Thompson's school days, however, were now to be cut short.  By the
20th of May, 1784, the formalities were completed by which he was
bound apprentice to the Hudson's Bay Company for seven years; and he
at once embarked from the Port of London on the Company's ship,
_Prince Rupert_, en route for North America.  The lines were cast
off, and the vessel with its cargo of goods for the Indian trade
drifted lazily down stream with the tide, carrying Thompson away for
ever from the sights and sounds of London, which he knew and loved so
well.

The voyage was uneventful, except for the usual incidents that
attended the westward journey of the Company's annual fleet.  Not a
detail, however, escaped the keen eye of the young traveller,
unaccustomed as he was to anything but the quiet life of the school,
and thirsting to see something of the world, which he knew only in
the pages of Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe.  The ship sailed up the
North Sea to Stromness in the Orkneys, there to wait three weeks for
the two vessels which were to accompany her across the Atlantic, and
to receive final instructions and sailing orders.  As they lay in the
harbour of Stromness, Thompson's keen eyes noted the strange life of
the kelp-burners on shore, men, women, and children who, half-naked,
gathered the dripping sea-weed in baskets, and lugged it on their
shoulders to the kilns.  Gazing at the rocky shore line and the low,
dark cottages with their smoky peat fires, which dotted the barren
hills, he was smitten with regret for the rich meadows and woods of
England, and for a moment he wished himself back amid the scenes of
his school life.  Yet in his rambles ashore, the lad found much to
interest him.  He observed with amusement the quaint habits of the
cottagers, who combined a brisk trade in smuggled liquor with lengthy
and solemn weekly devotions at the old-fashioned Kirk by the shores
of the harbour.

Sailing orders finally arrived from London, and the little fleet was
soon off on its hazardous journey across the stormy North Atlantic.
Presently the sight of icebergs drifting south with the Arctic
current, warned the crews that they were nearing Hudson Straits.  It
was a month before they had worked their way through the floating ice
of the Straits; after which the three ships separated, one for the
factories at Moose and Albany rivers, the second for York, while the
Prince Rupert, with Thompson aboard, headed _for Churchill_, the most
northerly of the Company's settlements on the west side of the Bay.
Before long, they sighted the granite coast, which they followed
southward.  This ended at Churchill in a low point of rock and sand,
surmounted by the grim stone battlements of Fort Prince of Wales,
which two years before had been gutted by the French in their raid on
the Bay.  Rounding this point, they found themselves in the mouth of
the Churchill, a noble stream, almost a mile in breadth.  Up the
river they made their way for a distance of five miles to a small bay
at the head of the estuary, where they cast anchor before the log
huts of the still unfinished new fort.

The arrival of the annual ship was the event of the year.  Hurried
preparations were made for discharging the cargo of provisions for
the factory and supplies for the Indian trade, and taking on board
the year's accumulation of furs, which were destined to adorn the
persons of the fashionable world of England and the Continent.  In
the midst of this confusion, the new apprentice was taken ashore, and
within ten days the _Prince Rupert_ sailed away, leaving him to face
the rigours of his new life on the dismal shores of Hudson Bay.

It was indeed a new life in which David Thompson found himself.
Apart from the officers, there was a staff of sixty artisans and
servants in the fort.  These were all busy from dawn till dark; for,
besides conducting their trade with the Indians, they had to maintain
themselves as a community in an utterly barren land.  At six each
morning in summer, and eight in winter, the duty bell summoned to
their toil, accountant, steward, armourer, shipwright, carpenter,
cooper, blacksmith, mason, tailor, and labourers.  Assisted by his
officers, the governor, gorgeous in scarlet tunic and ruffles, his
sword and pistols in his belt, supervised the labours of the factory.

By the early part of October, the myriads of wild geese and ducks
which each summer lived in the vast swamps to the south of Churchill
had winged their way to warmer climes.  The middle of the month saw
the marshes stiff with frost, and snow lying on the ground.  The
polar bear made his appearance, waiting for the ice to extend some
distance from the shore, when he left to prey on the seal, his
favourite food.  By the fifteenth of November, the broad and deep
river was frozen solid from bank to bank, not to break up until the
middle of June in the following year.  Till the end of December, the
staff were able to keep the yard of the fort clear of snow.  At that
time, a three days' blow from the north-east filled the fort with
snow to a depth of six feet, with drifts as high as the stockades.
Thereafter it was enough if they could keep paths cleared from one
hut to another.

The cold was intense.  The noise of rocks split by the frost broke
the silence of the night with a sound like that of a cannon shot.  On
the interior walls of the still unfurnished huts, the rime collected
to a depth of four inches, and on this the shivering inhabitants
threw pails of water in order that it might form a coat of ice to
increase the warmth of the houses.  Owing to the haste with which the
huts had been thrown up, there had been no time to lay in a
sufficient supply of firewood for the winter; and all the wood that
could be gathered for fuel allowed only one fire in the morning and
one in the evening.  During the rest of the day, if the weather was
bad, Thompson, with the others, had to pace the guard room floor,
muffled to the eyes in his beaver coat, in order to keep himself from
freezing.  On clear days, however, he passed his time in shooting
grouse, and this activity he enjoyed except for the tumbles in the
snow and the sore feet and ankles that resulted from his eager
efforts to walk in snow-shoes.

The dreary winter seemed endless, when, in the middle of June, summer
burst with the suddenness of dawn in the Tropics, bringing with it
torments which made Thompson regret even the discomforts of winter.
"Hudson Bay," he says in his narrative, "is certainly a country which
Sinbad the sailor never saw, for he makes no mention of musketoes."
These pests rose from the marshes in clouds, driving man and beast to
distraction.  The dogs in the fort howled in their agony, rolling
themselves on the ground and hiding in the pools.  Even the fox was
in a fighting humour, barking and snapping; and, hungry though he
was, he was forced to seek shelter in his hole.

Such was Thompson's first year on the Bay.  He had expected, when he
reached the Fort, to be employed as a clerk, but he soon found that
his only business was to amuse himself, "in winter growling at the
cold, and in the open season shooting gulls, duck, and plover and
quarreling with musketoes and sand flies."  Fortunately, however, he
had for company three of the officers of the factory, the deputy
governor, the sloop-master, and the surgeon.  To these gentlemen he
felt himself greatly indebted for the loan of various books on
history and natural science, by reading which he was able to put his
hours of idleness to profitable use.

The governor at that time was Samuel Hearne, a handsome giant with a
rubicund face.  It was Hearne who in 1782 had surrendered without a
blow the great stone fort at the mouth of the river.  That fort had
cost the Company forty years to build, and it was barely completed
when Hearne raised the white flag at the challenge of the French
admiral, La Pérouse.  To the mind of young Thompson, this act was
enough to stamp the governor as a coward.  It was, none the less, the
same Hearne who had succeeded in penetrating as far North as the
mouth of the Coppermine river, and was thus the first white man to
reach the margin of the Arctic ocean.  Nevertheless, Thompson
disliked him.  Like so many others at the close of the eighteenth
century, Hearne was infected with the doctrines of Voltaire, and his
atheism shocked the sensitive mind of the pious boy.  To a lad of
Thompson's ambition, the life of a hunter afforded no sort of
satisfaction, and he dreaded lest he should succumb to the deadening
influence of his surroundings.  He complained to Hearne that his lack
of clerical employment might lead to the loss of his penmanship, and
was barely satisfied when the governor handed him an invoice or two
to copy, and gave him occupation for a few days upon the manuscript
of his _Journey to the North_.

The idleness of which Thompson complained was, however, to end before
long.  With the arrival of the annual ship in 1785, orders came that
the young apprentice should proceed to York factory, the principal
dépôt of the Company, situated near the mouth of the Hayes river, one
hundred and fifty miles further up the Bay.  South of the Churchill,
the rim of granite which hems the coast recedes for some miles
inland, leaving a vast waste of marshy alluvial between the hills and
the water line.  Trees there are none, and the monotony of the
landscape is relieved only by boulders which the ice has scattered
over the face of the land.

To journey on foot the length of this swamp, with two drunken Indians
alone for company, was enough to test the courage and reliance of a
boy of fifteen.  Equipped with but a single blanket to protect him
from the chill of the September nights, the young David was ferried
across the river and put ashore on the south bank.  The day was fine;
but the Indians had been given their usual gallon of grog on leaving
the fort, and they soon reduced themselves to a drunken stupor.  A
night in the open, however, restored them to their senses.  The next
morning the party made an early start, marching till evening without
breakfast or dinner.  During the day, the Indians had shot a goose
and three ducks.  When they finally came to something like a dry spot
by the bank of a stream, the wild fowl were hastily cooked and eaten;
and the wearied travellers, wrapped in their blankets, flung
themselves on the ground to sleep.

Day after day, they trudged along the beach at high water mark,
always wet and muddy.  Innumerable creeks which drained the swamp
crossed their path and interrupted their progress.  Finally they came
to the mighty Kissiskatchewan or Nelson river, on the north bank of
which the Indians had laid up a canoe.  Paddling across to the south
shore, they crossed the tongue of low land that separates the mouth
of the Nelson from that of the Hayes river; and were at last in York.

The governor to whom Thompson reported was the notorious Humphrey
Marten.  This old tyrant was now in his twenty-fourth year of service
with the Company.  Surrounded by his numerous native wives and a
horde of half-breed children, he ruled the fort with a rod of iron.
The Indians who visited the factory he would beat most cruelly,
sending them away with revenge burning in their hearts.  In the fort,
his subordinates felt the weight of his unbridled temper; and they
bowed to his brutality only because they feared his vindictiveness.
Amid such surroundings and under such a taskmaster, Thompson passed
the following year.  He kept the accounts of the factory in his neat
handwriting, and joined with the rest of the staff in the hunting
necessary to supply the fort with food during the winter.




CHAPTER II

HE FINDS HIS MÉTIER

His first two years of service brought nothing but disappointment and
disillusion to David Thompson.  Vaguely sensible of his capacities,
he was conscious of nothing except that as yet he had been given no
scope to realize them.  But in the summer of 1786 a new and important
chapter opened in his life.  Fitted out with a trunk, a handkerchief,
shoes, shirts, a gun, powder, and a tin cup, he was included in a
party of forty-six "Englishmen" who left for the interior under the
leadership of Robert Longmore to establish trading posts on the
Saskatchewan river to the west of those already occupied by the
Company.

For over one hundred years from the time when the merry monarch had
vested in them a monopoly of trading rights in the vast territory
whose waters drain into Hudson Bay, the "adventurers of England
trading into Hudson Bay" had maintained their factories on the coast,
and allowed the Indians from the interior to make their way to them
for trade.  Great rivers flowed from all directions to the Bay; but
the courses of these rivers were still unknown to the map makers of
the British Admiralty in 1784, the year in which David Thompson
landed at Churchill.  For Hudson Bay is encircled from Labrador on
the north-east to the Arctic on the north-west by a giant horse shoe
of Archaean rock, most of it clothed with the dense northern forest;
and so long as the red men were willing to make the tedious journey
up and down the rivers, the slumbering giant on the Bay was content
to accept the annual tribute of furs which they flung at his feet.
Each September, when the ships from London arrived, the factories
were crammed with pelts that meant a fortune on the markets of the
Continent; and the traders eagerly awaited a fresh supply of guns,
axes, and kettles for the Indian, and awls and beads for his squaw,
as well as the fire-water which made him the anxious though reluctant
slave of the great white chiefs on the Bay.

But the monopoly of trade to which the Company laid claim had not
been accepted without challenge.  On the eastern face of North
America, the St. Lawrence river points like a finger to the heart of
the continent, and from the head of Lake Superior it is possible, by
a comparatively easy portage, to cross the height of land and descend
through Rainy lake, the Lake of the Woods, and the Winnipeg river to
Lake Winnipeg.  Lake Winnipeg forms a vast collecting basin for the
waters of the interior, before they finally discharge through the
Nelson river into Hudson Bay.  Thus it affords communication south
and west by way of the Red and Assiniboine rivers through the prairie
country of southern Manitoba, the Dakotas, and Minnesota; while, from
the north west corner of the lake, the Saskatchewan carries the
traveller to its sources in the Rockies.  While therefore the English
had waited for the Indians to bring their furs down to them on the
Bay, the French from Quebec had pushed their way along these waters
to the heart of the hunting grounds, and the advance of these gallant
adventurers was marked by a string of forts that extended from
Dulhut's post at the head of Lake Superior to Fort La Jonquière near
the site of Calgary.

The fall of Quebec in 1759 had brought with it the destruction of the
organized French fur trade, and the traders were scattered through
the wilds.  But new groups of adventurers, mainly of Scotch descent,
swarmed westward from their headquarters at Montreal, and penetrated
into the wilderness further than the French had ever gone.  By the
year 1772, the Montreal traders had crossed from the Saskatchewan to
the still more northerly Churchill river, and cut the line of
communication ordinarily used by the Indians of Lake Athabaska in
their long journey to Hudson Bay.  The consolidation of the rival
interests into one great firm--the North West Company--was
accomplished in 1784 at the very time of Thompson's arrival in the
West.  This achievement brought vastly increased strength to the
Montreal traders by mitigating the evils of their fierce competition.
Thus the Hudson's Bay Company was threatened with the loss of its fur
supply at the same moment as the French war interrupted its convoys,
and La Pérouse swept the Bay, destroying the posts at Churchill,
York, and Albany.

Energetic measures were necessary if the lost trade was to be
recovered.  As early as 1774, Samuel Hearne had taken the momentous
step of founding the first inland post of the Hudson's Bay Company at
Cumberland House.  Situated on the Saskatchewan a few miles west of
Lake Winnipeg, Cumberland House stood, as it were, in the centre of a
vast web of waterways.  "A canoe could start from this house, and
with no portage of more than a day's length could be launched on the
Arctic ocean, Hudson Bay, the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Gulf of
Mexico; and without much greater interruption could be floated on to
the Pacific ocean."  Despite the disasters of the French war, and the
dreadful epidemic of smallpox which in 1781 had swept across the
West, decimating and demoralizing the natives, the advance of the
Company was continued by the establishment of further posts along the
Saskatchewan river.  Thompson was thus drawn into the forefront of
the battle for furs, when he was included in Longmore's party in the
summer of '86.

On the 21st of July, the brigade of canoes left York factory for the
upper country.  Longmore, the chief, was well qualified for the task
of leading the expedition.  For many years he had served as
lieutenant to Tomison, the "chief inland" of the dépôt at Cumberland
House.  Here he had acquired the difficult knack of dealing with the
Indians, besides earning their love and respect.  Thompson's
immediate superior was Mitchell Oman, an old and experienced trader
of the Company, to whom he had been assigned as clerk.  Oman could
neither read nor write, but he nevertheless impressed the lad by the
unusual quality of his curious and inquisitive mind.  During the
tedious paddle into the interior, he drew from the pages of a
retentive memory endless tales of the Company's early activities
inland.  "In those days," he declared, "our situation was by no means
pleasant.  The Indians were very numerous, and although by far the
greater part behaved well, and were kindly to us, yet among such a
number there will always be found bad men.  To protect ourselves from
them, we had to get a respectable chief to stay with us and assist us
in trading, and prevent as much as possible the demands of these
men."  His valuable reminiscences were not lost upon the boy.

As the boatmen slowly worked their way up the river, Thompson's eyes
gazed for the first time on the country he was afterwards to know so
well.  Their course lay up the Hayes river, and thence, by way of
Lake Winnipeg, to the Saskatchewan.  Progress at first was rapid,
even against the stream, for they were still in the low and marshy
country that fringes the south-west corner of the Bay.  Presently,
however, they encountered the first of the many rapids which mark the
descent of the river to the sea.  At each of these, with monotonous
reiteration, the packs were all heaved ashore and shouldered along
the rugged path of the portage to the higher level of the river.  At
the same time, the face of the landscape suddenly altered.  The
marshy alluvial gave way to naked granite, and they entered the belt
of dark and gloomy northern forest.  As they passed through the heart
of the rocky country, the character of the river was also changed.
From point to point the stream was held back by ledges of granite
which broke its progress, giving rise to an irregular chain of wide
and deep lakes.  Through these lakes they threaded their way until,
reaching the end of the granite country, they saw before them the
broad expanse of Lake Winnipeg, the "bad water" of the Indians.
Sixty miles along its northern coast brought them to the point where
the Saskatchewan, after a swift and unbroken course of over one
thousand miles through the plains, plunges in a long series of
cascades into the lake.  Having portaged past these, and wended their
way through the alluvial flats of Cedar lake, they came at last to
Cumberland House, and the first stage of their journey was
accomplished.

Their objective was a point on the Saskatchewan about fifty miles
above the present site of Battleford.  As they continued their
journey westward from Cumberland House, the forest gradually gave way
to open country, and they found themselves in the vast expanse of the
plains, dotted here and there with clumps of trees--the country of
the bison, the antelope, and the red deer.  Passing the forks of the
river, they came to the site which the keen eye of Longmore had
selected.  There, on the northern bank of the stream, they cleared
the ground and ran up a series of log huts, surrounded by a wooden
stockade--the future Manchester House.  Except for a solitary post
which the North-Westers had for three years maintained about forty
miles further up stream, Thompson had now reached the limit of
country at that time familiar to civilized men.  To the west
stretched the unknown wilderness, which it was his destiny, in
considerable measure, to explore.

The object of the new post was to secure the trade of the natives of
the plains; and during the following winter David was busy learning
the complicated ritual of Indian barter.  In the course of a year he
had so far mastered his duties that he was selected to lead a party
of six men across country to the south branch of the Saskatchewan, in
order to open friendly relations with the Piegan and Blackfeet
Indians whose camps lay along the banks of that stream.  Each man had
a horse, and among them they carried a small assortment of goods.
The duties of the young diplomat were to find the camps of the
Piegans and winter among them, in order to induce them to hunt for
furs and to make pemmican or dried buffalo meat for the traders.  He
was to persuade as many as possible to travel to the post for trade.
With those who were unwilling to do so, he was to bargain for furs.

The party set forth in October, under their seventeen-year-old
leader.  The trail they followed led through a fine rolling country,
everywhere clothed with short grass, and dotted with islands of
poplar and birch.  For twenty-three days they rode without seeing any
animals other than a chance bull-bison which they shot for food.  To
the south of the Bow river they found an Indian camp pitched in a
spot where the tender grass afforded rich pasture for the buffalo;
but the plains, which were ordinarily black with moving herds, were
at this time strangely deserted.  After several moves, they finally
struck a large encampment of Piegans near the present site of
Calgary.  Sending some of his men back to Manchester House, Thompson
settled down in this camp to spend the winter.

The Piegan, Blood, and Blackfeet Indians were three allied tribes of
Algonquin stock who had emerged from the northern forest and taken
possession of the plains, driving their enemies, the Kootenay,
Salish, and Snake Indians, before them to the mountains.  Since the
white men had come to trade on the river, they had advanced from the
Eagle hills in western Saskatchewan to the very foot of the Rockies.
This rapid conclusion of an age-long struggle for the mastery of the
grazing country had been due to the fire-arms which they had procured
from the traders.

The manners and customs of the confederate tribes were in keeping
with their war-like disposition and constant danger.  Unlike the
scattered forest Indians, they lived in large camps, and without
yielding their traditional liberty to the control of a single
authority, they had nevertheless evolved a rudimentary form of social
organization.  Hunters of the bison, they were in constant need of
horses.  Horse-stealing was thus among them an honourable pursuit,
and their raids extended far to the south and west.  During the
winter of Thompson's stay among them, a raid on the Snakes took a
part of two hundred and fifty warriors a distance of one thousand,
five hundred miles to the south-west, as was testified by the thirty
well-bred animals that were brought back to camp, and the Spanish
saddles and bridles that lay thrown about among the tents.

Of the three allied tribes, the Piegans occupied the most exposed
position, and consequently led the most precarious and watchful life.
From boyhood they were trained in arms, and their martial bearing and
enterprising character produced a strong impression upon Thompson.
They had an hereditary civil chief or "orator", as he was called, who
presided at all councils except those of war.  Arrayed in his
splendid mantle of otter skin, he paced the camp each day three hours
after sunset, reciting in a loud voice the news which his couriers
had gathered, announcing in particular where the herds of bison were
feeding and what direction they were taking.  The war chief, on the
other hand, was a self-made man, whose power and influence had
developed from his conduct in war.  Kootanae Appee, as he was called,
was a magnificent giant, six feet six inches in height, and was the
father of twenty-two warriors, no less tall and sinewy than himself.
In after years, when Thompson was battling his way south along the
Columbia river, the bond of friendship which he now forged with this
old chief stood him in good stead.

The chief in whose tent Thompson passed the winter bore the name of
Saukamappee (Young Man).  Saukamappee was broad of shoulder and
strong of limb.  Old age had not bowed his grey head, nor had a
troubled life obliterated the mild and playful expression of his
countenance.  During the long winter evenings, he entertained his
guest with reminiscences that went back for fifty years.  From him,
Thompson learned of the Indian methods of fighting before the time of
firearms, of the first importation of these deadly weapons from the
distant factory at York, of the introduction of the horse among the
Blackfeet, and of the dreadful effects of the small-pox epidemic in
'81, of which Saukamappee himself had been a victim.  While Thompson
thus learned the history of the tribes among whom he was staying, he
practised himself in the use of their language.  His note books
contain long lists of Indian words with their English equivalents,
gathered from the Piegans and from other tribes whom he encountered.

The winter over, Thompson returned to the post, from which he was
sent to Cumberland House in the summer of 1789.  Here he began to
keep a careful meteorological journal, noting two or three times
daily the temperature, the strength and direction of the wind, and
the general character of the climate.  He also began a series of
astronomical observations, as the result of which he was able to
determine the exact latitude and longitude of Cumberland House.  This
post was thus the first of a series of widely scattered points fixed
by him on the map of British North America.  It was then, too, that
he acquired the large brass sextant which was to be his constant
companion for years to come.

Having made this start, Thompson attempted in the following summer to
make a survey of the canoe route from Cumberland House to York
factory, by way of the Saskatchewan and the Hayes rivers.  In the
autumn, he returned to Cumberland House.  While there, he had the
good fortune to meet Philip Turnor, the man without whose guidance
and help Thompson could hardly have realized his future career.

For several years, the Colonial Office had been urging the Hudson's
Bay Company to proceed with the survey of the vast territory over
which it exercised sway; and to satisfy the pressing demand of the
government, the Company had engaged Philip Turnor as astronomer and
surveyor.  Possessed of a sound theoretical training, Turnor had been
employed in England as one of the compilers of the _Nautical
Almanac_; and since 1776 he had added to his qualifications a wide
practical experience drawn from numerous surveys throughout the
region of the Bay.  Here was a man who could solve Thompson's doubts
and difficulties, and correct the deficiencies of his education for
the work which he had in view.  An eager pupil, Thompson sat at the
feet of Turnor during the winter of 1790; and when, in the following
spring, he returned to York factory, it was as a man with his mind
made up.  If a man knows clearly what he wants and has the
intelligence and perseverance to pursue his aims, no obstacle, not
even such as these which confronted Thompson, can keep him from
attaining his goal.

Thereafter Thompson and his beloved instruments were inseparable
companions in journeys that carried him for thousands of miles
through the wildest parts of the unknown west.  By day and night, he
was an object of wonder to his French-Canadian and Indian followers,
as, armed with his sextant, telescope, compass, and other
instruments, he took observations on the sun, moon, and stars.  While
he sought to determine the position of rivers, lakes, and mountains,
to be recorded on the map which was to be his life's work, his
activities suggested to their superstitious minds the idea that he
was in communication with powers not of this world, and earned him
the title which he bore among them, Koo-Koo-Sint, "The man who looks
at the stars."




CHAPTER III

TRADER, SURVEYOR, EXPLORER

When Thompson returned to York factory in the spring of 1791, it was
to find that great changes had taken place at the fort.  Five years
before, the tyrannous sway of old Humphrey Marten had come to an end,
and he had been succeeded as governor by Joseph Colen.  This man was
to direct Thompson's movements during the next six years.

The new governor was a man of unquestioned ability; but his jealous
and suspicious temperament made him work at cross purposes with the
governor of Churchill, and brought him into frequent conflict with
Tomison at Cumberland House.  He had never caught the spirit of the
aggressive policy initiated by Samuel Hearne, and preferred to
develop the fur trade with the Indians who came down to the coast for
trade, rather than to follow them to their hunting grounds.  In his
reports to the directors in London, he endeavoured to excuse his lack
of enterprise by hurling vague accusations at his colleagues; while
his subordinates, men like Thompson and Malcolm Ross, were irritated
and provoked by the lack of support from headquarters which
constantly frustrated their efforts to push forward the work of
exploring the more remote interior.

The seven years of David's apprenticeship were now at an end, and he
was engaged at a good salary as trader and surveyor to the Company.
He was not yet, however, given an opportunity of practising his
profession.  The previous spring, an ice-jam at the mouth of the
Hayes river had caused the water to rise, flooding the low land on
which the factory was situated; and for a year or more, Thompson had
to assist Colen in moving the fort to its present site on a high clay
bank about a quarter mile further up stream.

Meanwhile Philip Turnor had returned from a journey to Lake
Athabaska, and the report of his explorations had reached the
directors in London.  Proceeding from Cumberland House, he had worked
his way north through Amisk and Pelican lakes to Frog Portage, a
distance of one hundred miles.  After crossing the portage, he found
himself in the basin of the upper Churchill river.  This stream he
ascended as far as Isle à la Crosse, and thence he made his way
through Buffalo lake and Lake la Roche to the Methy Portage.  This
portage marks the divide between the waters that flow eastward to
Hudson Bay and those that discharge through the Mackenzie into the
Arctic ocean.  Crossing the portage, he descended the Clearwater
river to its junction with the Athabaska, whose broad stream soon
carried him to the lake of that name.  This was the regular route
followed by the Indians of the far north in their journeys to Hudson
Bay.

Turnor's report filled the directors with a desire to dispute the
trade of Lake Athabaska with the men of the North West Company; and
they bombarded Colen with instructions to send Ross and Thompson to
that region.  But to Colen's mind there was a more pressing necessity
nearer home.  The North-Westers had entered the rocky belt to the
south-west of York, and had monopolized trade throughout the
irregular series of lakes and rivers which form the tributaries of
the Nelson and lower Churchill, thus challenging the "English" on
their home front itself.  Accordingly Colen ignored the instructions
from London, and despatched Ross and Thompson into this "muskrat
country," as it was called, with orders to build posts at strategic
points and restore the trade of the Company.

On the 5th of September, 1792, Thompson set forth with two canoes on
his first independent command.  Rounding the point from York factory,
the canoes swung into the broad channel of the Nelson river.  By the
end of the month they were well above Split lake, Thompson making a
survey as they moved along.  At this point one of the canoes turned
aside to ascend Grass river, while Thompson with the other continued
along the main stream until he reached the upper end of Sipiwisk
lake.  Here in a little cove formed by two projecting points of rock,
with the dark spruce forest at his back and a view to the south west
over the island-studded lake, he built his first trading post, and
settled down to face the winter in a country almost devoid of fish
and game.

His heart, however, was set on exploration.  From the Indians he
learned that, besides the well-known route which had been followed by
Turnor to Lake Athabaska, there existed another, north from the
Churchill river to Reindeer lake, and thence westward by way of the
Black river to the east end of Lake Athabaska.  This route he made up
his mind to explore.

Accordingly, when the ice had cleared from the rivers, he set forth
alone without any help or encouragement from headquarters.
Descending to the lower end of Sipiwisk lake, he turned to the left
and passed by a series of portages through Wintering, Red Paint and
Burntwood lakes to the Missinippi or Churchill river, up which he
paddled for a distance of thirty-three miles.  But the Indian guides
whom he had expected to meet failed to put in an appearance, and he
was forced to turn back.  He therefore descended through Burntwood
lake and the Nelson river to York factory.

Colen had given the English directors to understand that he planned
to send Ross and Thompson to the Athabaska country; and with the
arrival of the annual ship in the autumn of '93, they wrote that they
expected much good to follow from the projected expedition, and that
they wished William Cook, who had accompanied David into the Muskrat
country the previous autumn, to join with the others in the invasion
of the far north.  But Cook was not recalled from his post on Split
lake, and Ross and Thompson were sent up the Saskatchewan to
Cumberland House.  Thence Thompson was despatched, not to Lake
Athabaska, as he had expected, but westward along the river to a new
post called Buckingham House, from which he rode still further west
to the Beaver hills near the future site of Fort Augustus (Edmonton).
Returning, he surveyed the Saskatchewan east from Buckingham House to
the Forks, and from the Forks he resurveyed the rest of the river.
From Cumberland House, he explored a new route through Goose, Reed,
and Burntwood lakes to the Nelson, and thus opened up a direct line
of communication between the dépôt at Cumberland House and York
factory, much superior to the old course by way of Lake Winnipeg and
the Hayes river.

Thompson's reappearance at York without having been to the Athabaska
country made it necessary for Colen to do no little explaining to the
impatient London directors.  In a long letter to them, he hinted that
it was Tomison who was responsible for the fiasco.  Tomison, he said,
had refused to pass his word for the advance of wages promised by the
Council to those who would volunteer to accompany the expedition.
Ross, he declared, was utterly disgusted with the repeated
disappointments, and would have returned at once to England, had not
Thompson prevailed upon him to make one last trial, this time by way
of Reindeer lake.  Thompson and Ross, he added, were being fitted out
with canoes and supplies at York, and would be sent up the Nelson
river track.  The directors were deceived, and swallowed their
disappointment, hoping to hear that the difficulties which stood in
the way of the Athabaska expedition had been successfully overcome.

But, even now, Thompson was sent, not to the North, but back once
more to the Muskrat country, this time to Reed lake.  Here, in a
district comparatively rich in fish, game, and furs, he built a
house, and spent one of the coldest winters in the history of the
Hudson Bay.  While hunting and trading, he also prepared for the
directors of the Company, the maps and surveys of the country which
he had already traversed.  In July of the following year, 1795, he
paddled down the river on what was to be his last visit to York.

On this occasion Colen was absent on a trip to England, but the
factory was seething with discontent.  Thompson found the staff
impatiently waiting, in order that he, the youngest and bravest among
them, might take the lead in drawing up a statement of the grievances
which they suffered under Colen's rule.  This office he accepted,
although with some hesitation on account of the absence of the
governor.  Assisted by his friend the surgeon, he drew up a statement
which Colen declared seriously prejudiced him in the eyes of the
directors; although, according to Thompson, not one half of the evils
were even mentioned of which the staff had cause to complain.
Thompson was not ashamed of the part he had played in this mutinous
outbreak.  As soon as he had left the service, he took the
opportunity of explaining to his old chief that he was the author of
the protest which had so much displeased him.  "Many of us," his
letter concluded, "acknowledge with readiness that you have some good
qualities, and I once had the greatest respect for you; I have some
yet, but----it is not my wish to say those things which I know you do
not wish to hear.  How is it, Sir, that everyone who has once wished
you well should turn to be indifferent to you, and even some to hate
you, although they are constant in their other friendships?--there
must be a defect somewhere.  The fact is, that from your peculiar
manner of conduct, you are also one of those unfortunate men who will
have many an acquaintance, but never a real friend."

Thompson's final break with Colen did not, however, occur until two
years later.  He turned in his furs, and without waiting, except to
secure supplies for the coming winter, went back to his duties in the
Muskrat country.  This time he built a house far to the north on Duck
Portage, the link connecting Burntwood lake with the Churchill river.
When spring opened, instead of returning to York, he made ready for
his dash to Lake Athabaska.

Formal permission had reached him from Colen, sanctioning his venture
into the unknown wilds.  This, however, meant nothing, because it was
not accompanied by help of any kind.  At that moment, indeed, the
Company was seriously crippled for lack of men to keep up the few
inland trading posts that then existed, for the war which was raging
between England and France had drained the Orkney islands of all men
who were fit for service in the army and navy.  The few miserable
dwarfs who could be obtained for the fur trade excited the contempt
of even the Indians.

Thompson, nevertheless, was not to be deterred from his enterprise.
He proceeded at once to Fairford House, the trading post kept by
Malcolm Ross on the Churchill near the mouth of the Reindeer river,
where he hoped to get some assistance.  To his great disappointment,
he found that not a man could be spared from the trade in furs.
There were, however, a few Chepawyan Indians lingering about the fort
and from among these he managed to engage two young men.  Kozdaw and
"Paddy" had hunted for two winters in the country he was about to
explore, although neither of them had ever been on the rivers and
lakes in summer.  Their only practice in canoes had been to lie
offshore in the lakes on a calm day, watching for the deer to take
refuge from the flies, and this gave them no experience of the
currents and rapids of rivers; yet, such as they were, Thompson had
no choice but to take them.

The first task was to construct a canoe.  Having searched the forest
for a supply of birch bark, they made a boat seventeen feet in
length.  Into this they packed their meagre outfit, a fowling piece
with forty balls, five pounds of shot, three flints and five pounds
of powder, a fishing net, a hatchet and a small tent of grey cotton.
These articles, together with a few handfuls of beads, rings, and
awls for trading, made up their terribly inadequate equipment.

In the grey dawn of a June morning, 1796, Thompson launched his canoe
on the turbid waters of the Missinippi.  The party advanced rapidly,
making a survey as they went.  For supplies they relied on their
solitary net and gun.  Turning into the Reindeer river, they worked
their way north against a moderate current to Reindeer lake.  A
hundred miles up the west coast of this lake brought them to a point
clothed with tolerably good pines.  This point Thompson noted as a
suitable site for building a trading post on his return.

The whole distance through which they had come had a barren, rocky
appearance, relieved only by patches of stunted birch, aspen, and
spruce.  Since there was little or no soil, the trees stood with
their roots interlaced like the trees on the frozen lands of Hudson
Bay; and, like them, they were kept moist in summer by the wet moss
with which their roots were covered.  Through wide stretches the
forest fires had passed, leaving the country unsightly and ghostlike,
and destroying the wild animals of the forest.  Thompson was now in
fact approaching the northern limit of trees, beyond which stretch
the barren lands, the home of the musk ox and caribou.

In order to avoid the wide circuit of the Cochrane river, which flows
to Reindeer lake from Lake Wollaston, the guides directed Thompson up
a stream that emptied from the west a few miles north of his point of
pines.  From the head of this stream there was a passage by a series
of ponds and brooks to the south end of Wollaston lake.  But the
water was low, and they were forced to carry their packs for the
better part of fifty miles, stumbling over the rocks and wading
through the marshes, while clouds of mosquitoes buzzed about their
defenceless heads.  It was a welcome relief when they launched out on
the clear and deep waters of Lake Wollaston, which they crossed
without trouble to the Black river.  Here they made camp on the
evening of June 23, and rested while Thompson took observations and
made up the notes of his survey.

Two days later they were once more under way.  Lake Wollaston, as
Thompson discovered, was situated on the height of land between the
basins of Hudson Bay and the Mackenzie river.  Part of its waters
discharged eastward and south into Reindeer lake, while part flowed
westward through the Black river into Lake Athabaska.  From this
curious circumstance, the lake was known to the Indians as "Lake
Manito," and was considered to be of supernatural character.
Entering the Black river, the party passed at first through the quiet
reaches of the upper river, in a wretched country of solitude, where
the wild laugh of the loon alone woke the echoes of the barren hills.
Presently the banks closed in, and as the current stiffened, they had
to paddle vigorously to avoid the projecting rocks.  Finally an
expansion of the stream brought them to Black lake.  It was during
this stretch that they came upon the only human beings they had so
far encountered--five tents of Chepawyans, hunting and fishing in an
otherwise deserted land.

They could afford but one day to enjoy the hospitality of the
Indians.  From Black lake, the river tumbles in two wild cascades to
the level of Lake Athabaska.  A series of rapids, cutting through a
high hill, warned them that they were approaching the first of the
falls.  For half a mile they shot the rapids to a point where the
river is compressed within a channel only twelve yards in width.  At
the end of this channel, the current rushed against a projecting
ledge of rock with such force that the whole river seemed to be
turned up from its bottom.  The dashing of the water against the
rocks, the deep roar of the torrent, the hollow sound of the fall, in
the midst of the dark, high, and frowning hills, made a sight so
grand and terrible that Kozdaw and Paddy were awe-struck, and offered
their simple tributes to the manito of the fall--the one a bit of
tobacco, the other a ring.  Past this fall the travellers descended
by a well-beaten native trail.  A second series of rapids and a
second fall brought them to the last lap of their journey, and they
paddled quietly for six miles into the east end of Lake Athabaska.
Here they passed the night, resting from their dangers, toils, and
sufferings under a pine tree which had been lopped and marked by
Philip Turnor in his survey of 1791.

Thompson's heart was thrilled by the thought that he had finally
accomplished the journey on which for the last five years his heart
had been set, and that in so doing he had blazed a trail through the
wilderness over ground which the feet of white men had never trod
before.  He was sobered, however, by the prospect of the long and
difficult journey home.  His net and gun afforded but a scanty supply
of food, and should these fail him, there was but slight hope of
succour.  But gloomy as were his forebodings, it was well that he did
not know what lay before him.

Half way up the Black river, he encountered one of the rapids which
was broken about the middle by a twelve-foot fall.  Portaging past
the fall, he attempted to "track" the canoe up the rest of the rapid.
The two Indians were ashore tugging at the tow-line, while Thompson
in the canoe tried to steer and at the same time direct their
movements.  Near the head of the rapid there was at the water's edge
a tree which blocked their progress, and as the Indians stood
hesitating which side of it they should pass, the canoe sheered off
across the current.  An upset was inevitable, had not Thompson waved
to the Indians to let go the line and leave him to his fate.
Springing to the bow, he cut the rope off short with the clasp knife
which he kept in his waistcoat pocket, and got the head of the canoe
around into the stream just in time to take the plunge over the
cataract.  For an instant, Thompson was buried beneath the boiling
water at the foot of the fall.  Striking his feet against the bottom,
he pushed himself to the surface close to the upturned canoe.  This
he seized and dragged through shallow water to the beach.  The
Indians came rushing to his assistance, and, while he lay on the
rocks, bruised, bleeding, and exhausted by his exertions, they
searched the shore below the rapids for what could be recovered of
their precious kit.

The gun, the axe, and the tent had remained fastened in the canoe.
In half an hour's time, the Indians brought back the cork-lined box
containing Thompson's instruments and the maps of his survey,
together with their three paddles and a pewter basin.  Not one moment
was to be lost.  Thompson's body was naked except for his shirt and a
thin linen vest, and his companions were in like condition.  The
small tent they tore into three pieces with which to wrap themselves
as a defence against flies by day and chill by night.  Worse still,
Thompson found as he painfully raised himself from the rocks that the
flesh of his foot had been torn away by the impact of the jagged
stones of the river bed, and a part of his share of the tent had to
be taken to bind the wound.

The first duty was to repair the canoe, and the Indians were sent to
the woods to procure gum from the pines.  The question was then how
to light a fire, for they had neither flint nor steel.  Thompson
pointed to his gun from which they took the flint, and with the steel
blade of his pocket knife they struck a spark.  When the gum was
melted, they repaired the canoe and carried their kit above the fall
and rapids.  The Indians shouldered the canoe, while behind them the
wounded leader hobbled painfully along under the burden of gun, axe,
and sextant case.

Night had fallen before they found time to make a fire and warm
themselves.  Their situation was enough to strike terror into the
boldest heart.  Destitute, almost naked, and suffering from the
weather, they faced a journey of three hundred miles through a barren
country.  Yet Thompson did not despair.  For two days they paddled
and portaged up the river without a bite to eat.  On the afternoon of
the second day they saw two gulls hovering over a reedy bay as if to
protect their young.  They found the nest and in it three young
gulls, but the few ounces of meat which they were able to pick from
their miserable carcases sufficed only to sharpen their hunger.

The next day as they went along, Thompson remembered an eagle's nest
on the banks of a small lake before them.  When they came to the lake
they found the nest in the spreading branches of a birch tree, about
sixteen feet above the ground.  Kozdaw had barely time to climb to
the nest before the old birds arrived.  Paddy and Thompson, with
shouts and stones, succeeded in preventing them from attacking
Kozdaw, while the latter threw the two young eagles to the ground.
The birds fought with beak and claw for their lives, but were finally
killed and flung into the canoe.

In the evening, they opened the eagles by the gleam of the camp fire,
and divided the meat and yellow fat into three equal portions.  While
Kozdaw roasted his meat and oiled his body with the fat, the others
ate only the fat, reserving the meat for next day.  In the night they
were both awakened by a violent dysentery, which continued to plague
them for many days, although a strong infusion of a certain dried
moss, known as Labrador tea, brought them some relief.

Day by day they continued their voyage, subsisting on the wretched
crow-berries of the far north.  By the sixteenth of July, Thompson
and Paddy were like skeletons, from hunger, dysentery, and cold.  On
that day Thompson scratched what he thought was his dying message on
a scrap of birch bark which Kozdaw was to carry back with him to
civilization.  Late in the afternoon, as they paddled weakly and
painfully along, they came upon two tents of Chepawyans.  The savages
pitied their condition and restored them with broth.  From them
Thompson procured some provisions, a flint and a few rounds of
ammunition, together with a pair of shoes each for himself and his
men.  Thus they were able to proceed on their journey, and arrived
without further adventure at Fairford House after an absence of
thirty-one days.

At Fairford House Thompson was joined by Malcolm Ross with a stock of
provisions for the northern trade, and together they returned to
build a trading post on Reindeer lake.  Along with the supplies, Ross
brought a letter from Colen to Thompson, containing a curt order that
he should cease his surveys and explorations.  This was his reward.




CHAPTER IV

WITH THE NORTH-WESTERS

The chilly reception which Thompson met after his return from Lake
Athabaska was enough to quench the enthusiasm of any man.  He might
have lain down under the blow.  In that case he would no doubt have
ended his days as an obscure and broken-spirited trader, embittered
by his fate, but powerless so late in life to change it.  Another
course, however, was open to him, if he had the courage and
self-reliance to take it.  This was to throw up his post with the
Hudson's Bay Company, and seek employment in other quarters where his
talents would meet with the recognition they deserved.

In the long winter evenings at Reindeer lake, he weighed the problem
before him.  Colen, his chief, had undoubtedly failed to appreciate
the value of his work.  Worse still, he had hampered it, since for
the last two years he had neglected even to supply Thompson with the
_Nautical Almanac_ so necessary for his surveys.  But behind Colen
stood the Company.  How far had they given him the sympathy and
encouragement which he needed?  The directors, he felt, might easily
have had the northern part of the continent surveyed as far as the
Pacific coast, and thus greatly extended the range of their trade.
This they could have accomplished at trifling expense, for in England
there were numbers of highly-trained naval officers on half pay, who
would have jumped at the chance of employment.  But any explorations
which they had undertaken were solely at the behest of the Colonial
Office.  His feelings toward the Company may not have been altogether
justified.  Nevertheless, he could only conclude that there was
little or no future for him in the service.  With Thompson to think
was to act.  On the 28th of May, 1797, he left his post on Reindeer
lake and walked south through the bush for seventy-five miles to the
nearest house of the North-Westers.  After ten days spent there, he
proceeded to Grand Portage, the headquarters of the Company at the
west end of Lake Superior, in order that he might offer his services
to the merchants from Canada.

Situated on a small bay at the mouth of Pigeon river, Grand Portage
had been for several years the general dépôt for the trader of the
North West Company, the lair from which those "sly wolves of the
North" had sallied forth to work such havoc with the trade of the
English on Hudson Bay.  Along the shore ran a line of docks, which
each summer were piled high, now with the parcels of merchandise for
the interior trade, now with the packs of furs which had been
gathered from the distant trading posts for the market in the east.
Along the bay front and up the bank of the river sprawled the village
of log huts in which dwelt the half-breed families of the French
voyageurs.

The fort itself was in keeping with the dignity of the Company and
the magnitude of its operations.  A palisade eighteen feet high
enclosed the great square in which stood the various
offices--storehouses, servants' quarters, and lodgings for the
clerks.  In the centre of the courtyard towered the main building, a
stout log structure surmounted by a high balcony.  This contained the
apartments of the partners, and the great hall, its walls covered
with portraits of the leading members of the Company in all the glory
of ruffles and scarlet coats.  Here took place the grave
deliberations of the merchants, and here each evening they dined in
solemn state.  The stone powder magazine, the jail with its barred
windows, and the sentry in the archway of the great gate lent a touch
of grimness to the picture of this far-flung outpost of commerce.

At Grand Portage, Thompson received a warm welcome from those of the
partners who were at the time present in the fort.  On his way down
he had met Roderick Mackenzie, cousin to the famous Sir Alexander,
and Simon Fraser, soon to win distinction as the discoverer of the
Fraser river.  At the post he found the Honourable William
McGillivray, prominent in the councils of the Company, and Sir
Alexander Mackenzie himself.  Sir Alexander had been the first white
man to descend the Mackenzie river to its mouth, and he had blazed a
trail across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific.  He had but recently
returned from England, wearing the honour of knighthood which he had
earned for his explorations.  All of these gentlemen impressed
Thompson as being men of enterprise and vision, and among them he
found the liberal and public spirit which in his former employers he
had sought in vain.

At that time, questions of serious import were agitating the minds of
the partners.  By the treaty which closed the American Revolutionary
War, the boundary between the British dominions and the territories
of the United States had been fixed as a line drawn from the
northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods to the source of the
Mississippi, which was then thought to lie considerably north of its
true position.  Nine years later, the forty-ninth parallel of
latitude had been accepted as the boundary; and by the Treaty of
Amity and Commerce subsequently passed, it had been agreed that all
British trading posts south of this line should be withdrawn.  This
made it necessary for the Company to fix at once the location of
their houses on the upper Red river, and incidentally if possible to
discover the true source of the Mississippi.  The partners were also
anxious to have a route surveyed to the headwaters of the Missouri
river, where there existed the villages of an Indian people who got
their living from the cultivation of the soil.  The scientific spirit
of the merchants was shown by their further desire to search for the
fossil bones of prehistoric animals and any monuments which might
throw light on the earlier condition of the regions surveyed.
Finally, they wished to ascertain the courses of the rivers and the
situation of the lakes, in order that they might rearrange their
network of trading houses so as to cover more completely the
territory under their sway.

Thompson's arrival came therefore at an opportune moment.  He was
promptly engaged as astronomer and surveyor to the company, and the
partners and agents all agreed to send orders to their various
trading posts that he should be given any assistance he required.  In
August, the great canoes arrived from Montreal with the goods for the
Indian trade.  When these were unloaded, the merchandise was assorted
and made up in parcels each of ninety pounds' weight, so that the
boatmen might be able to shoulder them over the portages.  These were
then taken in charge by the various agents and their shouting crews
of voyageurs.  Five days of hard labour were needed for the carry
over Grand Portage to the upper waters of Pigeon river.  When all was
ready, Thompson climbed the long trail from the lake.  Armed with his
precious instruments, he joined the Swan river brigade of four
canoes, and embarked on what was to be the longest, fastest and most
brilliant piece of survey in his whole career.

Progress was tedious until the party had crossed the watershed beyond
which all streams flow north-westward into Lake Winnipeg and thence
into Hudson Bay.  They then made a rapid descent through Rainy lake
and the Lake of the Woods to the Winnipeg river (the mad or foaming
water of the Indians), down which they paddled and portaged to its
mouth.  Coasting along the south shore of Lake Winnipeg under the
shelter of its low limestone cliffs, they came to the mouth of the
Dauphin or Little Saskatchewan river.  The ascent of this stream
brought them to the waters of Lake Manitoba.  They had only to paddle
to the head of this lake, and from thence the length of Lake
Winnipegosis, in order to find themselves at the mouth of the Swan
river.  Twelve miles up this stream was their objective--Swan River
House.

As they approached their goal, Thompson observed that the land was
rapidly improving in character; until at Swan River House he found
himself in the heart of a fine varied country of hill and plain,
woodland and meadow--the beaver country _par excellence_.  Here on
every side were to be found traces of the labours of these
industrious animals; the dammed brooks, the flooded meadows, the
dome-like huts in which they lived and the burrows to which they fled
for refuge when attacked.  All this fine country was the hunting
ground of the Cree Indians, the possession of which they had from
time immemorial disputed with the beaver, the bison, and the red deer.

When the early French traders arrived, they brought with them
chisels, knives, and other implements of iron.  The Indians, having
got possession of these, were able to cut through the dams, drain the
waters of the ponds, and thus expose the huts and burrows of the
beaver.  Then, assisted by their small half-savage dogs, they would
chisel their way through the thick walls of the huts until they came
to the beaver.  Since there was a ready market for his skin among the
French traders, they soon became rich, and for several years men,
women, and children were gay with brooches, ear-rings and beads, and
gaudy with scarlet coats.

But then the Nipissing and Iroquois Indians, who had exhausted their
own countries, spread to the north and west.  Armed with their new
steel traps, they began a war of annihilation upon the beaver; and by
the year 1797, when Thompson travelled through the Swan river
district, almost the whole of that extensive region was denuded.  The
short phase of prosperity was over.  The greed of the white man and
the improvidence of the Indian had done their work, and while the
native might still hope to gain a bare subsistence from hunting the
deer and the bison, he was once more poor, thus to remain for ever.

Over this country, Thompson made a series of rapid excursions by
horse and canoe, in order that he might fix the location of the
various trading houses of the North West Company.  In the course of
five weeks, he had crossed to the basins of the Red Deer and the
Assiniboine rivers, and surveyed each of these streams to its source.
He then descended the Assiniboine to its confluence with the Souris,
near where the city of Brandon now stands.  Here toward the end of
November he put up at Assiniboine House, which was at that time kept
by a trader called John McDonnell.

McDonnell's house was the natural point of departure for the journey
across to the Mandan Villages on the upper Missouri.  The trail lay
in a south-westerly direction along the south bank of the Souris
river as far as the great bend, and from thence across the open
plains to the heights of the Missouri.  As the country was generally
treeless, the custom of travellers was to move from point to point
where patches of wood growing in the river bottom or at the higher
levels afforded firewood and shelter for the night.

Winter had come, and three inches of snow lay upon the ground, making
travel both disagreeable and dangerous.  Worse still, the road passed
through the hunting grounds of the Sioux Indians, those wild riders
of the plains who lived by pursuit of the bison.  The Sioux had
lately suffered the loss of several men at the hands of the Mandan
Indians; and these losses they blamed on the whites who had supplied
the Mandans with guns and ammunition.  They were therefore in a very
menacing temper, and had determined to waylay, scalp, and plunder the
next party of traders who ventured the journey to the villages.

Thompson, however, was not to be deterred; and he made his
preparations for the dash across the plains.  As guide and
interpreter, he engaged a man who had resided for eight years among
the Mandans, by name René Jussomme.  He also picked up a
light-hearted Irishman, Hugh McCrachan, who had often been to the
villages for months at a time.  The rest of the party was made up of
French Canadians, gay and gluttonous vagabonds, who could
nevertheless work as hard as they boasted, and hunt as much as they
ate.  All these men enlisted for the expedition as free traders; that
is to say, each of them borrowed from McDonnell goods and trinkets to
the value of fifty beaver skins, which he undertook to repay on his
return.  Thompson himself was supplied with two horses, and
ammunition and tobacco for trade.  Jussomme had one horse; while the
men each bought two half-savage dogs from the Assiniboines.  These
were to haul their sled-loads of goods across the plains.

Thus equipped, the party set forth on the 28th day of November.  The
dogs were unaccustomed to hauling anything.  Snapping and barking,
they dashed hither and thither in all directions, hardly restrained
by the loud _sacrés_ of the Frenchmen, reinforced by lashes freely
administered with their stout rawhide whips.  The motley procession
crossed the Assiniboine on the ice, and camped that evening in a wood
by the side of the Souris river, hardly six miles from the point from
which they had set out.  Meanwhile, the temperature was falling.  At
eight that night Thompson observed that it was 20° below zero.  By
the following morning it had dropped seven degrees more, and a
stinging west wind had sprung up which kept them in camp.  Here they
remained for five days, in a temperature that sank as low as 40°
below zero; while the high wind whistled through their canvas, and
filled the tent with smoke from their fire.  During this time, they
devoured the flesh of three bison which the Frenchmen had brought
into camp, while the dogs rejoiced in the offal.

The wind had by this time shifted to the north-west, and the weather
turned milder with snow.  When the storm was over, they renewed their
journey, keeping close to the river in order that they might not lose
sight of the familiar landmarks, for the men neither knew the compass
nor would trust it to guide them.  After making eleven miles, they
came to a grove of hardwood, in which they found five tents of
Assiniboine Indians.  These gave them a hospitable welcome, but
warned them that the Sioux were on the warpath.  Nevertheless, they
pressed forward, and by the following morning had reached the point
where the trail led away from the river across the wind-swept plain
to Turtle Mountain on the international frontier.

Jussomme now announced that they must prepare for an early start, as
they faced a long journey across country before they could reach the
shelter of the wooded heights.  At seven the following morning they
were on their way.  Mile after mile they trudged over the boundless
plain until one o'clock in the afternoon, and still no Turtle hill
was in sight.  The weather had now turned threatening, and anxiety
was in every face.  At this point Jussomme threw up his hands and
confessed that he had lost his way.

It was a critical moment.  Springing to his horse, Thompson galloped
to the nearest knoll, from which with his glass he scanned the
horizon on every side.  Not a vestige of wood was in sight, but far
to the north-west his eye caught what seemed to be the tops of a
clump of trees.  On this he took a bearing with his compass, and
called to the party to follow him, which after some hesitation they
made up their minds to do.  Meanwhile the wind came on with
increasing force, and the darkness closed in before they could see
whether it was really a wood to which their painful and tedious march
led.  However, they kept in file and close together, and the dogs
gave no trouble.  It was black night before they finally reached the
wood.  Utterly wearied, the men hurriedly threw up their canvas and
sought shelter from the storm.

The blizzard continued through the next day, and the men were too
exhausted to proceed.  They remained in camp with nothing but the
meat of two tough old bulls to relieve their hunger.  The day
following two of the three horses went lame, their hoofs eaten away
by the hard crusty snow.  Luckily they encountered a small party of
Assiniboines on their way to McDonnell's house to trade, and were
able to send the horses back with them to the fort, purchasing dogs
from the Indians in their stead.  Two days later they met another
party of Indians, and from them got a good meal.  These Indians
warned them that the Sioux were in waiting at the Dog Tent Hills; and
no offer would induce anyone of them to go forward with the party as
a guide.

They were now in the neighbourhood of Turtle Mountain, and Thompson
had taken sole command.  Another gale, another blizzard, and another
march till nightfall brought them to the hill.  On this occasion
again the compass proved a trusty guide.  In the darkness, Thompson's
face brushed against the overhanging branch of a tree, and he knew
that he had guided his men safely to the wood.  Thus they continued
as far as the Dog Tent Hills, near the elbow of the Souris.  On
approaching the broken country, Thompson espied a long line of
horsemen descending the slope and moving off to the south.  It was
the Sioux, who had made up their minds that no traveller would
venture forth in such tempestuous weather.  Thompson signalled his
men to throw themselves flat on the ground.  This they did, and
remained unperceived until the enemy was out of sight.  They then
entered the hills, and while they rested and hunted, cut tent poles
and firewood for the dash across the barren plain.  The fifty miles
that still divided them from the waters of the Missouri were passed
without adventure, and they arrived, tired but triumphant, at the
upper village of the Mandans after a journey of thirty-three days.

Thompson was now introduced by Jussomme to a chief who bore the name
of "Big White Man."  To this chief he explained that his business was
not to trade, but to visit the various tribes of natives, in order to
see how they could be more regularly supplied with arms, ammunition,
and other articles which they much needed.  Surprised and pleased at
this agreeable information, the chief led the white man to his own
hut, where he and his servant Boisseau were comfortably installed and
entertained with all the rites of native hospitality.

In company with Jussomme and McCrachan, Thompson then paid a visit to
each of the five villages in turn.  These, he found, were all built
alike of domelike huts constructed of mud plastered over a framework
of wood, each with an aperture in the centre of the roof to carry off
the smoke of the fire and admit light to the solitary chamber of the
dwelling.  In front of each house stood a porch made of stretched
bison skins, affording an approach to a doorway large enough to admit
a horse.  Passing the door, one entered a circular chamber about
forty feet across, and, from the earthen floor to the aperture in the
roof, eighteen or twenty feet in height.  To the left of the doorway,
sat the master of the house on a couch covered with buffalo robes.
Before him was the fire, built in a circular space hollowed out of
the floor, and surrounded by vessels of native pottery containing
maize and boiled meat, the food of the household.  Around the walls
were a series of frame bunks about three feet from the ground, each
of them enclosed by hides except for the front and made comfortable
by a soft buffalo robe.  To the right of the entrance were the stalls
for the two or three horses which belonged to the household, to which
every evening they were led back after pasturing on the plains.  In
the smallest of these villages, Thompson counted thirty-one such
huts, in the largest one hundred-and-thirteen, each hut containing a
family of from eight to ten souls.

Surrounded as they were by fierce and violent enemies, the Mandans
had constructed their villages with an eye to defence rather than to
comfort.  For this purpose a site was selected on elevated ground, so
that no attack could be made from above.  The houses were then built
irregularly without regard for streets, and the whole village
surrounded by a stockade of timbers at least twelve feet in height.
On more than one occasion, Thompson learned, the Sioux had taken
advantage of a dark and stormy night to approach the villages and
fire the palisades.  But the flames had no power to destroy the
earthen houses; there were no straight streets down which the enemy
could shoot; and, as a regular siege was beyond the power of any of
their foes, the Mandans had hitherto escaped destruction.

The tribe, when Thompson visited them, were already acquainted with
the use of iron.  Their flint-tipped spears and arrows they gladly
laid aside, when they could, for a long spear, headed with a flat
iron bayonet nine or ten inches in length.  Thus far, however, they
had been visited only irregularly by traders; and so had but few guns
among them.  Iron was so precious for purposes of war that it had not
yet come into common use for agriculture.  Their ploughs were made of
the shoulder blade of a deer or bison, neatly fastened by thongs to a
handle.  For hoes, they used pointed sticks hardened in the fire.  A
council of old men allotted to each family its portion of ground in
the rich alluvial of the river bottom.  From this they were able with
their rude implements to raise a sufficient quantity of the maize,
pumpkins, beans, and melons which were native to America.

Thompson was anxious to find out the origin of this interesting
people, for they had not been many years on the banks of the
Missouri.  Their traditions, however, went back no further than the
days of their great-great-grandfathers.  These, they said, had dwelt
to the eastward, possessing the rich flats about the upper waters of
the Red river and the Mississippi.  There the wild rice grew in
abundance and the deer were in plenty, though the horse and the
buffalo were unknown.  On all these streams they had villages and
cultivated the ground as at present from before the memory of man.

The Sioux to the south of their ancient home were their enemies, but,
armed only with stone-headed spears and arrows, could do them little
harm.  To the north-east, in the depths of the gloomy forest, dwelt
the Chippewas, who were likewise powerless to hurt them.  But the day
came when the Chippewas, armed by the white traders with guns,
ironheaded arrows, and spears, silently collected under cover of the
forest, and sallied out to harry their villages with fire, and cut
off their men as they were scattered in hunting parties far and wide.
Hard pressed by the attacks of an enemy whom they could not resist,
they gave way from point to point until they arrived at the banks of
the Missouri; and thus put the width of the great plains between them
and their implacable foes.

Having made friends with the natives and taken the observations
necessary to determine the position of their villages, Thompson
prepared to depart.  As the Mandans dwelt in the territory of the
United States, and it was contrary to the treaty of 1794 for a
British company to plant trading posts among them, commerce was
possible only if they were willing to make the journey to McDonnell's
house to trade.  Accordingly a chief in the prime of life, together
with four young warriors, was selected to accompany Thompson on the
trip home.  These were joined by an old man and his squaw, who said
that they wished to see the houses of the white men before they died.
But the heights of the Missouri were too much for the aged couple,
and they dropped out.  Fourteen days of storm and tempest on the open
plain sufficed to kill the spirit of two of the warriors, and they
also dropped out.  With the remainder, Thompson arrived at
Assiniboine House on the 3rd of February, 1798.  Unfortunately, the
attempt to open up trade with the Mandans turned out to be
unsuccessful.  The journey was long and difficult in winter; and, in
summer, the Sioux were active and cut off parties who tried to make
the passage across their land so that the Mandan villages proved to
be beyond the reach of the merchants from Canada.

At McDonnell's house, Thompson prepared the maps and notes of his
survey to be sent by the next convoy to headquarters at Grand
Portage.  He then took leave of his hospitable friend, and set forth
on his explorations up the Red river.  With three French Canadians
and an Indian guide, he started down the Assiniboine, hauling his
baggage and provisions by dog sleds on the ice.  The tedious windings
of the stream and the ever increasing depth of snow made progress
difficult.  Nevertheless, by the 7th of March he had reached the
junction of the Assiniboine and the Red rivers, where the city of
Winnipeg now stands.  He then turned up the Red river, and in six
days' travel came to the international boundary, beyond which it was
his duty to warn all traders that they were trespassing in the
territory of the United States.

By the 25th of March he had worked his way south as far as the post
of Baptiste Cadotte, which was situated on a tributary of the Red
river, near the present site of the town of Red Lake Falls.  From
this point he purposed to cross the height of land to the western end
of Lake Superior.  Could he do it before the break-up of winter, and
while the mantle of snow still lay on the ground to give passage to
his dogs?  He had, it will be remembered, no experience of southern
latitudes.  His last winter had been spent by the shore of Reindeer
lake, where the ice stood firm till a windstorm broke it up on the
fifth day of July.  Cadotte warned him that the season was too far
advanced; but he took the risk.

On the 27th of March he began his his journey eastward up the
Clearwater river into Minnesota, picking up a guide from some
Chippewas whom he found on the way.  As the day wore on, the rays of
the sun increased in power, and walking became difficult in the
thawing snow.  The night was mild, and the following morning the
guide took care to break his snow-shoes that he might have an excuse
for returning to camp.  The day was wasted, while Thompson waited
impatiently for another guide to be sent to take the place of the
first.  At sundown a storm came on with thunder, lightning, and rain,
which continued the night through and far into the next day.  The
snow was now so heavy that progress was impossible.  The continuous
rains had soaked the clothes and the baggage of the party through and
through.  The fourth day opened with gusts of hail and sleet.  The
country before them was like a lake, and Thompson was compelled to
admit himself beaten.  Splashing and stumbling through the bush and
along the treacherous ice of the river, the party struggled to make
their way back to the protecting shelter of Cadotte's roof.  But
their baggage was too much for them, and they had to give in.
Finally Thompson with one man, travelling light, pressed forward to
the post for help; and by the afternoon of the second day the weary
travellers were brought safely into camp.

When the rivers were finally clear of ice, Thompson, with his three
Canadians and a native woman, made a fresh start, this time by canoe
and with dried provisions to last for twelve days.  They had first to
battle their way against the current of Clearwater river, to the
portage which brought them to Red lake.  The country was everywhere
soaked with water, so that at night they were forced to cut down
trees and sleep on the branches.  Red lake, they found, was still
covered with patches of broken ice.  Hauling and paddling their canoe
in turn they crossed the lake, and entered an immense area of pond
and marsh to the south.  Everywhere stretched beds of wild rice, the
haunt of innumerable geese, duck, and loon.  With infinite toil they
made their way from lake to lake and brook to brook, until after five
days in the marsh they arrived at Turtle lake.

This lake Thompson took to be the true source of the Mississippi.
Twenty years later American surveyors reached the conclusion that, of
all the ponds whose waters join to form the Mississippi, Lake Itaska
most deserved the name.  Lake Itaska lies a few miles to the south
and west of Turtle lake.  Yet this fact hardly suffices to rob David
Thompson of the glory of being the first man to fix the point from
which the Father of Waters takes its rise.

There was still a long journey ahead to the coast of Lake Superior;
and the canoe was leaky from bumping about among the ice floes.
Luckily two boats of Chippewas came along on their way to John
Sayer's post at Red Cedar or Cass lake.  With these Thompson and his
party embarked.  A carry of two hundred yards took them past the
narrow and shallow waters of Turtle brook, to a point where the
stream was enlarged by a tributary from a nearby lake.  Here they
launched their canoes and followed the stream through its incredible
windings to the lake.  This was the country of wild rice and maple
sugar, and on these the poor Indians were compelled to subsist.  Not
a deer or a beaver was to be seen; all had been destroyed.  The geese
and ducks flew overhead in safety; for the impoverished natives could
not even afford the price of guns and ammunition, and they had lost
the art of making and using the bow.

Sayer supplied Thompson with a fresh canoe, which enabled him to
continue his voyage.  From the south of the lake, the valley of the
Mississippi now lay clear before him to the south east--a wide
expanse of marshy ground through which the channel meandered like a
writhing snake.  As he advanced, however, the marsh gave way to a
sandy loam, heavily clothed with resinous fir.  Arriving at Sand Lake
river, he turned east along this to Sand lake.  Before him was a
great swamp, nearly five miles in width and stretching north and
south as far as the eye could reach.  This was the last barrier
between him and the headwaters of the River St. Louis.  Shouldering
their canoe and baggage, they advanced along the rude corduroy road
which the traders had laid across the bog.  As often as they missed
their step, they sank to their waists in the mire.  A long day's work
was needed before they had reached the other side.  From thence a
brook carried them to the main stream of River St. Louis.  They
passed into the forest country that surrounds the lake; and were soon
at the trading house which the North-Westers maintained at Fond du
Lac on the present site of the city of Duluth.

Here they found an old twenty-eight foot canoe, which they patched up
and fitted with oars, for their slight river craft was unequal to the
winds and waves of Superior; and they had still to make a survey of
the lake.  The weather was fine; and they made the circuit without
adventure, east along the south shore to Sault Ste. Marie, and
westward along the north shore to Grand Portage.  Late in the evening
of the 7th of June, Thompson set foot on the pier, his long journey
over.

At Sault Ste. Marie he had encountered Sir Alexander Mackenzie and
William McGillivray travelling east to Montreal.  When they heard
what he had done, they were warm in their praise, and told him that
he had accomplished as much in ten months as might have been expected
in two years.  His reputation was thus established, and his future
with the North West Company was assured.




CHAPTER V

EIGHT YEARS OF TRADING

The report which Thompson made to his employers after his return to
Grand Portage was of immense value to them.  They now had a clear
idea of the whole stretch of country from Sault Ste. Marie to the
upper waters of the Missouri river, and were in a position to
rearrange their trading houses to meet the needs of the time.
Similar work remained to be done in the other regions to which the
interests of the Company extended.  But the same haste was not
required, and the surveys could be pushed forward with less
difficulty and expense in connection with what was the main object of
the partners, that is the prosecution of the trade in furs.  Thompson
was therefore requested to undertake some of the actual work of
trading, with freedom to make such journeys of exploration as he saw
fit.

The eight years following therefore mark a new period in his service
with the North West Company, during which his activities carried him
far and wide along the great waterways of the interior.  Throughout
these years he exercised, to the full, the qualities of mind and
character which made him such a unique surveyor.  His bulky note
books were crammed with memoranda gathered with painstaking accuracy
and checked with minute care.  From time to time, where a less
hurried visit to one of the more comfortable trading houses made it
possible, he added his newly acquired information to the map which he
had in hand.  With each report that he made to Headquarters, the
picture of the Great West gradually took shape.  Its physical
features were delineated; its wild life was noted and classified; its
native populations, their numbers, their racial affinities and
languages, their manners and customs were as far as possible
described.  This was indeed wizardry, as his ignorant French-Canadian
and Indian followers imagined; but it was the wizardry of science,
which, by the slow accumulation of ascertained facts, lays the whole
world of nature at the feet of civilized man.

In the summer of 1798, the attention of traders was largely directed
to the western forest country, which lies beyond the divide
separating the waters of the upper Saskatchewan from the basin of the
Peace and Athabaska rivers.  Twenty years before, Peter Pond had
penetrated into this region as far as Lake Athabaska, and there
established a post.  At Lake Athabaska, ten years later, Roderick
Mackenzie had built Fort Chippewyan, from which Sir Alexander had set
out on his two famous voyages, the one down the Mackenzie to the
Arctic, the other up the Peace to its headwaters and from thence
across British Columbia to the Pacific.  Apart, however, from the
activity centred in Lake Athabaska, little had been done as yet to
explore the possibilities of trade in what is now northern Alberta.

Thompson was therefore instructed to proceed to Lake la Biche or Red
Deer lake, whose waters fall into the Athabaska river about fifty
miles below Athabaska Landing.  On the 14th of July, he set forth
from Grand Portage with the Churchill river brigade.  By the middle
of August they had reached Cumberland House, and a week later they
had crossed over Frog Portage to the main stream of the Churchill.

From this point west the route lay through a region as yet new to
Thompson.  As he ascended the river to Isle à la Crosse, he found
that the country was still composed of the denuded rock with which he
was familiar on the lower stretches of the river.  Ridges of this
rock, crossing the valley of the stream from point to point, gave it
the character of an irregular chain of lakes with many portages and
falls.  Like the rest of the stony country, it was somewhat poor in
game and fur-bearing animals, although many of the lakes teemed with
fish.

From Isle à la Crosse to the valley of the Athabaska there were two
possible routes.  To the north there was Turnor's old course by way
of Methy Portage and Clearwater river.  To the south, the Beaver
river led through a district of plain and forest to its headwaters at
Beaver lake, from which there was an easy portage over the height of
land to Lake la Biche.  Thompson followed the Beaver river, and
arrived at Lake la Biche in time to build a post before the beginning
of winter.

He was now at the southern end of that vast stretch of country which
he calls the Great Western Forest, and almost in the same latitude as
that of Reed lake in the Muskrat country where he had spent the
winter of 1794-5.  He was thus in a position to compare the climate
and soil of this region with that of his old home on the eastern or
"Siberian" side of North America.  Throughout the long winter months,
he kept as usual a careful record of the temperatures registered from
day to day by his thermometer.  At Reed lake, the temperature for
December had varied from +31° to -45° with a mean of -10° F.  For
January it had varied from +11° to -47° with a mean of -21.3°, and
for February from +39° to -31° with a mean of +6°.  At Lake la Biche
he found that although in each of the three winter months, the
mercury sank as low as 48° below zero, it rose at times as high as
43° above, and that the mean for December, the coldest month, was not
lower than -6.5°.  Then, too, while Reed lake was hardly above the
level of Hudson Bay, the country about Lake la Biche was high and
dry, and the snow did not lie so thick on the ground at the end of
winter.  Accordingly, the rays of the sun had a chance to exert their
power on the face of the land much earlier in the year, and spring
burst at Lake la Biche long before winter had loosened his iron grip
on the region about Reed lake.

The forests with their wild life responded generously to the less
rigorous climate.  In the Muskrat region, the wretched traders and
Indians were forced to scour the country for fish and game in
quantities sufficient to keep them alive.  At Lake la Biche the
waters yielded an abundant supply of fish; and during the five months
that he spent at the post, Thompson saw no less than forty-nine moose
and several buffalo brought in, all of which had been shot within
twenty miles of the house.  There also all the animals, including the
precious beaver, attained their full size and development.

Thompson wished to get an idea of the extent and general character of
this western forest land, and the quickest way to do so was to survey
the Athabaskan waters from their sources.  Accordingly, when spring
opened, he rode across country southwest to Fort Augustus and from
thence westward to the headwaters of the Pembina, which at this point
was divided from the valley of the Saskatchewan by a narrow neck of
land.  Embarking on the Pembina, he followed it down till it merged
with the main stream of the Athabaska river.  A short excursion up
the Slave Lake river enabled him to explore the shore line of Lesser
Slave lake.  Returning to the Athabaska, he continued along its broad
stream past Athabaska Landing to the mouth of the Clearwater river,
and from thence he made his way along the well-known track by Methy
Portage and the Churchill to Grand Portage.  Throughout the region
embraced in his survey, he found little exposed rock and therefore
few lakes, but what was better for the beaver many small brooks and
streams which they could dam for their ponds.  The country thus
promised a steady yield of furs from year to year, and this, with the
generous supply of game which the forest offered to trader and
trapper, was enough to justify the name which it bore, "The
fur-traders' paradise."

In the mad competition for pelts, the different companies could not
rest content with the trade of regions already within their grasp.
Each of them sought always to push further afield; for he, who could
anticipate his rivals in opening new country, might plant his trading
houses on the most advantageous sites and bind the Indians to himself
with ties which later comers could not break.  In 1790, Peter Pangman
for the North-Westers had pressed along the course of the North
Saskatchewan to a point five miles above its junction with the
Clearwater.  There from a hill top he had gazed along the line of
snow-capped Rockies, and his eyes had travelled up the winding course
of the river to the gap through which it issued from the mountains.
From that time the partners had never ceased to dream of the wealth
that lay beyond the Great Divide.  In a decade the line of their
trading posts had been extended to a point but three miles short of
"Pangman's Pine."  There, in a wide plain not far from the forks of
the river, rose the walls and blockhouses of Rocky Mountain House,
destined to serve as a point of departure for the invasion of the
last great area as yet unknown.

But much tedious work remained to be done before it would be possible
to hazard the passage of the Rocky Mountains.  Besides the North
Saskatchewan, there were two main branches of the South river, the
Red Deer and the Bow rivers, and these had to be surveyed to their
sources in the foothills in order to determine the best routes for
trade.  The Blackfoot, Blood, and Piegan Indians, whose encampments
lay along the courses of these streams, were suspicious and hostile.
They held these regions by right of conquest from the Kootenays and
Snakes whom they had driven to the mountains; and these needed only
to procure the muskets and ammunition which the white men could
supply in order to sweep down through the rugged passes and revenge
themselves for the defeats of many years.  The Indians therefore
steadily opposed any movement of the traders toward the Rockies, and
even the stoutly fortified trading posts were hardly secure against a
sudden assault.

In these circumstances, the partners at Grand Portage could think of
no one better qualified than David Thompson to accomplish the objects
of the company.  They remembered the early connections which he had
made among the Piegans during his service with the English, and they
had complete confidence in his skill and daring.  Thompson was
accordingly taken away from his work in the Athabaska country, almost
before it was well begun, and despatched up the Saskatchewan to Fort
George, in order that he might draw the maps of his recent surveys
and complete his preparations for the work that was now in hand.

In the spring he took horse and rode overland to Fort Augustus, and
thence south along the Edmonton-Calgary line to a point just short of
the present town of Lacombe.  Turning west, he struck the Clearwater
near its mouth and found himself at Rocky Mountain House.  While he
himself descended the North Saskatchewan to the elbow, making a
survey as he went, he sent four French Canadians south to the Red
Deer river, with orders to follow it to its junction with the main
stream of the South Saskatchewan.  A short distance below Rocky
Mountain House, he found a party of Hudson's Bay men encamped for
building.  The English, as well as the Canadians, were bent on
crossing the Great Divide; and it would be a serious blow if they
were allowed to anticipate the North-Westers in so doing.

Accordingly, on his return to Rocky Mountain House, Thompson brought
with him Duncan McGillivray from down the river, in order that he
might have assistance in pressing forward his explorations.  Along
with McGillivray, he rode across to the Red Deer river, where he
found a camp of Piegans.  A short stay among them was enough to lull
their suspicions; and Thompson was then able to ride twenty-two miles
west to the foot of the mountains, where he expected to meet a band
of Kootenays.  These he found, twenty-six strong.  With their women
and children they had crossed the divide to meet the white traders.
These Kootenays were the first of the British Columbia Indians whom
Thompson had encountered.  He warned them of the presence of the
Piegans only a few miles east, and sent them back across the
mountains.  In order to avoid the Piegans, they travelled by way of
the North Saskatchewan and succeeded in reaching their homes
unobserved.

Meanwhile, with McGillivray and four men on horseback, Thompson
crossed the Red Deer river and rode still further south to the banks
of the Bow, not far from Calgary.  This stream he surveyed as far
east as the bend and westward to Exshaw at the foot of the mountains.
McGillivray then made a traverse across from the north fork of the
Saskatchewan to the valley of the Athabaska, the results of which
were carefully incorporated in Thompson's notes.  Thompson himself
spent the rest of the winter at Rocky Mountain House, trading with
the natives and taking observations to fix the location of the post.

When spring opened, he resolved to attempt a journey into the
mountains by land.  With a party of eight men and an Indian guide, he
started westward from Rocky Mountain House.  In the narrow valley of
the Sheep river, the horses could go no further; and as the guide
knew of no other route, they returned to the post.  A second attempt,
this time by canoe up the Saskatchewan, was equally unsuccessful
because of the floods on the river.  When Thompson returned to
eastern headquarters in the spring of 1802, he was not yet able to
report that he had opened a practicable route to the west of the
Rockies.

What was the effect of this news upon the minds of the partners?
From Thompson's subsequent movements, it is possible to surmise.  The
attempt to pierce the mountains from the headwaters of the
Saskatchewan was for the time being abandoned, and attention was once
more transferred to the north.  According to the surveys already made
by Thompson, the west end of Lesser Slave lake could not be more than
fifty or seventy-five miles from the valley of the Peace river, up
which Alexander Mackenzie had travelled ten years before.  Thither
Thompson was sent, with instructions to explore a route across the
watershed.

From the upper end of Lesser Slave lake, he pushed his way west
through a wide valley until he came to the banks of the Smoky river.
On the different branches of the Saskatchewan, he had noted the seams
of coal exposed along the banks.  At Smoky river, the coal beds,
ignited by spontaneous combustion, had been burning from beyond the
memory of the oldest Indians on the river, and the dark clouds of
smoke which they sent forth gave the river its name.  Smoky river was
a tributary of the Peace.  A short journey down stream brought him to
the Forks where now stands Peace River Landing.

Thompson spent the winters of 1803 and 1804 developing trade from the
old posts built by Mackenzie at the Forks of the river, and westward
beyond the frontiers of British Columbia.  Here, as at the headwaters
of the Saskatchewan, he found rivals.  No sooner was he settled at
the Forks than a party of XY traders from Montreal landed a few yards
from the post and made preparations for the erection of a house.
Thompson prosecuted his work with his accustomed vigour.  In the
winter of 1805, when Simon Fraser set forth on the journey that was
to make him famous, he found that a base for his exploration of the
Fraser river had been soundly established on the Peace by his friend
and colleague David Thompson.  He honoured him accordingly when he
gave the name of Thompson to the greatest tributary of the Fraser
river.

By the summer of 1804 Thompson was once more back at headquarters, no
longer at Grand Portage (for that had been surrendered to the
Americans), but at Fort William on Thunder Bay, where the dépôt of
the company had now been established.  In that year, the trade war
with the XY Company had reached an acute stage.  The Hudson's Bay
Company had also reorganized their enterprises, and between them
these rivals had almost succeeded in wresting from the North-Westers
the trade of the Muskrat country.  Thompson was therefore withdrawn
from the fields of his recent activity, his chance of crossing the
mountains was indefinitely postponed, and he was sent into the
Muskrat country to restore the trade of that region to the Canadians.

With a heavy heart he turned his back on the far west, and entered
the cold and dismal forest which he knew only to loathe.  But loyalty
was one of the deepest instincts of his nature, and so, with
indefatigable energy, he proceeded to build new posts and explore new
routes in the region north-east of Lake Winnipeg.  In the course of
his efforts, he carried the flag of the North-Westers to a point on
South Indian lake not more than two hundred and fifty miles distant
from Churchill itself.  In his relations with rival traders, he
exhibited a friendliness and courtesy that stands in marked contrast
with the cut-throat methods too frequently adopted at critical
moments of competition.  The surveys begun years before, when he was
working under Joseph Colen, were now triumphantly finished.  Of them,
a member of the Canadian Geological Survey says, "After Thompson had
completed his surveys of this muskrat country, no further information
was obtained about it for nearly a century, and when in 1896, I
travelled through it, the only map of any service which was available
was that drawn by David Thompson in 1813 from surveys made at this
time."

It is sometimes imagined that the Indians a century ago existed in
vast numbers; and that they were universally of a warlike and
bloodthirsty disposition.  This is a complete mistake.  It was only
in especially favourable localities that conditions were such as to
promote the evolution of large bands, and generally speaking the
Indian was a poor and humble creature.  Lacking the power of
invention, he was often satisfied to make use of utensils of the most
primitive character, and he was almost, if not quite, unarmed.

Throughout the whole of the Muskrat country Thompson was able to
count but ninety-two widely scattered families, each of them
numbering perhaps seven souls.  This gave to every human being from
two to three hundred square miles of hunting country.  Yet so poor
was the region and so great the improvidence of its inhabitants that,
in unfavourable seasons, the population was often reduced to the
verge of starvation, and it was only by means of the greatest efforts
that they wrested a livelihood from their gloomy land of rock and
forest.

All of Thompson's efforts therefore did not avail to bring
satisfactory returns from a region so poor in furs, and inhabited by
such a sparse and wretched population.  It was with joy in his heart
that he handed over the district to a partner in the early summer of
1806, and once more wended his way back to Fort William.

Two events of personal interest in the life of Thompson occurred
during these eight years.  The first was his marriage to Charlotte
Small, the half-breed daughter of Patrick Small, an early trader in
the West.  Small was a member of a famous Irish family, which had
given generals and admirals to the service of the Empire.  He had,
however, followed the custom of the country and taken a native woman
to wife.  Thompson's marriage took place at Isle à la Crosse in the
summer of 1799.  The other event took place on November 8, 1804,
although the news of it did not reach Thompson until some time later.
On that date the North West Company and the XY Company agreed to
cease their ruinous competition and join forces for the expansion of
their trade.  In the terms of agreement, the name of David Thompson
appears as a partner of the United Company.  This was good news in
itself; but better still was the prospect that loomed up before his
eyes.  With the wounds of competition healed, and the Canadian
trading interests now presenting a united front, the last obstacle to
an aggressive forward movement was removed, and the conquest of the
Rockies might finally be achieved.




CHAPTER VI

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE

There are long stretches in human life when the contest with fate
seems endless and the result uncertain, but it is such periods that
test the mettle of a man.  In the life of David Thompson, the eight
years just past had been marked by no striking achievement.  Yet with
unflagging patience and zeal he had discharged his routine duties,
constantly adding to his equipment the knowledge and judgment that
come from maturer years and wider experience.  When therefore his
hour at last struck, he was not unready.  Expert surveyor, skilled
trader, he was now to crown his life-work by a piece of original
discovery and exploration on a scale grand enough to place him in the
foremost rank among the builders of British North America.

It was summer of the year 1806 when Thompson returned from the
Muskrat country to headquarters at Fort William.  There he found a
new excitement and a new enthusiasm in the air.  During the preceding
year the American officers, Lewis and Clark, had crossed from the
upper Missouri to the valley of the Snake river, and followed that
stream to its junction with the lower Columbia, down which they had
made their way to the Pacific ocean.  John Jacob Astor, the great
American merchant, was exerting all his strength to build up a fur
trading empire on the Pacific slope under the flag of the Republic;
and the full extent of his ambitions was now disclosed.  For some
years the Hudson's Bay Company had been knocking at the barrier of
the Rockies, and, spurred by competition, they might at any moment
burst through.  Fraser for the North-Westers had already advanced
from the Forks of the Peace, and accomplished the difficult and
dangerous feat of descending the Fraser river.  But between the
Fraser river on the north and the Snake on the south was a vast
region on which the feet of white men had never trod; and the North
West Company, no longer crippled by their civil war with the XY
traders, were resolved to claim this region for themselves.  Thompson
was at once despatched to Rocky Mountain House, with definite
instructions to cross the mountains, this time as senior officer at
the post and in full charge of the operations.

The winter of 1806-7 was spent in preparation; and John McDonald of
Garth, trader of the Company, together with Quesnel and Finan
McDonald, clerks, lent a hand in the work.  The route selected was by
way of the North Saskatchewan, which Thompson knew must be
practicable, because it was along this road that the Kootenay Indians
had returned, when he sent them back to their homes some years
before.  He therefore despatched one of his men, a half-breed called
Jaco Finlay, up this road into the mountains, with instructions to
spy out the land.  Everything was done with the utmost quietness.
The Piegan Indians suspected nothing, although they were at all times
visiting the fort.  Even the Hudson's Bay people, encamped on the
river just below the North-Westers, had not an inkling of Thompson's
plans.

In the spring Jaco Finlay returned to the post with his report.  He
had penetrated through the gap in the mountains to a large valley
near the head of the river, where he had built a small outpost and
got in touch with the Kootenays.  From this valley he had crossed the
watershed to a small stream which flowed south-westward and emptied
into a mighty river.  At the mouth of this stream he had built a
canoe, which he had carefully "cached" for Thompson's use.

At this moment an incident occurred in distant Montana, which, tragic
in itself, was not without advantage for Thompson.  Captain Lewis,
the American officer, had became embroiled with the Blackfeet.  They
attacked his camp and two of their warriors were killed.  Suddenly
all the allied tribes were inflamed with the passion for revenge.
War parties gathered throughout the plains, and the Piegans in the
neighborhood of Rocky Mountain House were drawn off to the south.
Perceiving the passes unguarded, Thompson gathered his equipment and
made an immediate start.  With his wife and children, Finan McDonald
and a party of half-breeds to help him, he moved up the river by
horse and canoe and entered the mountains.

As he advanced, the country became rougher and wilder.  The grassy
hills were left behind, and the mountains raised their heads in mad
confusion height on height, bald and precipitous masses of solid
rock, except for the patches of pinewood that clung here and there to
their slopes.  At times, the crags came together compressing the
river to the width of a few yards, through which the current rushed
against them.  Again, when the valley widened, the stream would
divide into many channels dotted with rugged islets and marked by
shoals of rock and sand.  Finally they reached the valley in which
Jaco Finlay had built his house--a low and level plain to the north
side of the river, about five miles long and not less than a mile in
width.  On every hand were to be seen the remains of old tepees
erected by the Kootenays, who frequented the spot to make dried
provisions from the buffalo and mountain goat.  For this reason
Thompson gave the valley the name of Kootenay plains.

Above Kootenay plains, the river contracted to a width of barely
fifteen yards, and so continued to the forks, at which point the
canoes had to be laid up.  From the forks, there was a splendid view
of the mountains still ahead, their peaks more elevated and craggy
than they had so far seen, for they were in fact the main range of
the Rockies.  Taking the left branch of the stream they followed it
to within a mile of its end in Glacier lake.  At this point, between
Mount Balfour on the right and Mount Forbes on the left, was a gap
opening to the west.  Into this gap they turned.  A march of two
miles through heavy pinewood brought them to a rivulet whose waters
flowed to the west.  "May God in his mercy," says the pious explorer,
"give me to see where its waters flow into the ocean and return in
safety."  Thus he marked out his programme for the next four years.

This rivulet (Blaeberry creek) descended sharply through a narrow,
winding valley between the heights; and it was necessary for the
party to force their way through the thick woods along the steep and
rugged slopes, and to cross and recross the stream through water
knee-deep, in order to reach the mouth.  A full day's travel,
however, brought them to the valley of the Columbia.  The weather had
done its work on the canoe built by Jaco Finlay; and it was quite
unseaworthy.  They had to halt while they scoured the woods for
materials and built new canoes.  Finally they embarked and paddled
south up the Columbia until they came to its headwaters.  There, a
short distance from Lake Windermere, they hewed logs of heavy fir and
built a cabin which they strongly stockaded on three sides, the
fourth resting on the steep bank of the river.  This was Old Kootenay
House, the first trading post erected by white men on the waters of
the Columbia.

In this remote spot, the safety of all depended upon the courage and
resource of the leader.  Additional supplies were needed from Rocky
Mountain House, and Finan McDonald was sent back across the mountains
to fetch them.  Until the end of autumn, provisions were scarce, for
the red deer and antelope had not yet descended from the higher
levels, and the mountain goat was hard to shoot as he leapt from crag
to crag.  The party therefore relied on fish and the flesh of wild
horses whose feeding grounds were not more than two miles from the
house.  For the purpose of trade, it was necessary to get in touch
with the natives and to examine the country as well as possible.  The
season was late, but Thompson was able to make one short excursion
with a chief of the Flatbow Indians.

When Finan McDonald rejoined his chief, he brought with him alarming
intelligence.  In the course of the summer, the brother of Old White
Swan, a Blackfoot chief, had with his band assaulted and pillaged
Fort Augustus, possessing himself of many guns, much ammunition and
tobacco and various other articles.  Whether or not he had murdered
the traders at the Fort, McDonald could not say; but it was clear
that the spirit of unrest and resentment against the whites which had
for some time pervaded the whole Blackfeet confederacy was now coming
to a head; and Thompson could hardly hope that he himself would
escape serious trouble.

Trouble came rather sooner than he expected.  The fort was not yet
finished when twelve Piegan Indians appeared on foot from across the
mountains.  A month later twenty-three more arrived.  These set up
their tents along with the others just outside the gates.  For over
two months they hung about the stockade, making themselves very
objectionable, and forcing the garrison to remain together within the
walls.  But Thompson had a small stock of dried provisions on hand,
and he put his men on short rations, so that there might be no need
to scatter over the country for hunting.  For water, he let down two
large kettles nightly from the steep river bank and this was enough
for the daily needs of the post.  Towards the end of October, two of
the Indians disappeared from the group, and the garrison feared a
general attack.  Nothing, however, materialized, and before winter
set in, the savages drifted quietly away.

Yet their peril was not yet over.  One morning, two more Piegans
presented themselves at the fort.  Thompson was anxious, but he did
not flinch.  He showed them the strength of his stockades and
bastions, the walls bored with loopholes for his muskets.  "I know,"
he said, "that you are come as spies and intend to destroy us, but
many of you will die before you succeed.  Go back to your countrymen
and tell them this."  At the same time, he loaded them with presents
of tobacco for their friends.  A fortunate circumstance hastened
their departure.  Two of the Kootenay Indians came to the fort while
they were there, and when they saw the Piegans, they glared at them
like tigers.  Meanwhile the little garrison watched and waited, six
hardy voyageurs ready to die if necessary in order to make good the
words of their chief.  And while they waited, winter came on,
covering the mountains with snow and placing them in safety.

It was some time before Thompson learned the details of his escape.
The two Piegans were, as he guessed, the advanced guard of a large
war party that was being formed at the instigation of the civil chief
to crush the white men and the natives to the west side of the
mountains before they became well armed.  The war chief (Thompson's
old friend Kootanae Appee) had opposed this venture.  How, he urged,
could they smoke to the Great Spirit for success, if without warning
they invaded the lands of a people with whom for ten summers they had
been at peace?  Such, however, was the influence of the wilder
spirits, that the old war chief was compelled to yield to their will.

In fifteen days about three hundred warriors under three chiefs
assembled at the rendezvous named by Kootanae Appee, and under his
leadership marched through the mountains to within twenty miles of
the post.  There they awaited the return of their scouts.  It was not
long before the latter arrived.  The Kootenays, they said, were
gathering under the white man to fight for the protection of their
post.  At the same time they presented the chiefs with Thompson's
gifts, six feet of tobacco for Kootenae Appee, eighteen inches for
each of the lesser chiefs, and a fine pipe of red porphyry with an
ornamental stem in which to smoke it.

Thompson's knowledge of the Indians was thorough, and in this case,
his guess as to their intentions had hit the mark.  When the war
chiefs heard his message of defiance, they were dumbfounded.  "What
can we do with this man," they exclaimed, "our women cannot mend a
pair of shoes but he sees them" (alluding, of course, to Thompson's
astronomical observations).  Then the eldest of the three war chiefs,
wistfully eyeing the tobacco, of which they had none, observed: "I
have attacked tents, my knife could cut through them and our enemies
had no defence against us.  I am ready to do so again.  But to go and
fight against logs of wood that a ball cannot pierce, and with people
we cannot see and with whom we are at peace, is what I am averse to.
I go no further!"  So saying, he slowly fitted the pipe to the stem
and handed it to Kootenae Appee.  Led by Kootenae Appee, they all
smoked; and, having accepted Thompson's present, were unable to go
further against him.  Thus by his own resource and by the support of
an old friend won in the days of his service for the Hudson's Bay
Company, David Thompson prevented the destruction of the first
trading post on the Columbia.

With the coming of spring began the work of exploring the country.
Leaving McDonald in charge of Kootenay House, Thompson embarked with
four voyageurs on the 20th of April, 1807, and paddled through Lake
Windermere to the source of the Columbia.  From thence, an easy
portage of two miles across a grassy plain brought him to a fine
stream flowing south, the Kootenay river of today.  Launching his
canoe, he proceeded to search for Indians.

The river flowed swiftly along between high and steep banks of rock,
their slopes clothed with magnificent timber of all kinds.  From time
to time the stream narrowed so that the travellers were forced to
paddle briskly in order to keep ahead of the current.  As they
approached Kootenay Falls, in Lincoln county, Montana, the river
entered a cañon no less than a mile in length, terminating in a gorge
where the trail left the river side and meandered along the dizzy
slope of steep bed rock, three hundred feet above the level of the
stream.  An hour and a quarter was necessary for the carry; and they
cut their shoes to pieces.  The least slip would have meant sure
destruction; and they struggled along over the jagged rocks without a
grain of earth or sand on them to relieve their crippled feet.  On
the 14th of May, having followed the winding course of the stream
southward across the present international boundary and northward
again as far as Kootenay lake, they at length came upon ten tepees of
Indians.

During all this time, they had shot nothing except for a few antelope
and they were nearly famished.  Once they came upon the carcase of an
antelope, on which an eagle was feeding.  Chasing the bird, they
seized the meat, but it was tainted and made them all sick.  The day
following, they encountered the Indians.  These, however, had nothing
to offer the white men except a few dried carp and some bitter black
bread, made of the moss collected from the bark of the resinous fir
and the larch.

The snows of the mountains were now melting, and the water of the
river had risen six feet, overflowing the wide meadows.  Owing to the
floods, none of the Kootenays were willing to come to the house to
trade.  To paddle home against the current was impossible.  Thompson
therefore laid up his canoe, bought horses from the Indians and
engaged a guide who undertook to lead him overland by a well-known
native trail northeast along the valley of the Grand Quête river to
Kootenay House.

A day's travel brought them to a large brook, so deep and rapid that
the horses could not cross.  Thompson selected a large cedar growing
by the bank.  This he felled so that it lay across the stream and
served as a bridge over which they carried their luggage.  The horses
were taken separately, and by means of a heavy strap of rawhide,
dragged kicking and struggling to the further bank.  The guide then
went hunting, but returned empty handed, and the party went
supperless to bed.  Early next morning, he killed a small antelope,
which was eagerly devoured.  But the faint-hearted guide had already
had enough.  Without warning, he decamped and returned to his people,
leaving the white men stranded among the hills, without provisions
and utterly ignorant of the country.

For two days they waited with faint hopes of his return.  Thompson
then sent two of his men back to the tepees to ask for another guide.
In the presence of these men, Ugly Head, one of the chiefs, made a
bitter attack upon his followers.  He reproached them for their lack
of spirit, contrasting their conduct with that of the white men who
braved every danger and hardship to bring them arms, ammunition and
other things which they needed.  "How many of you," he said, "will
volunteer to accompany the strangers back to their home?"  Not a man
answered the call.  They knew too well the dangers of mountain travel
at that season of the year.  In this crisis Ugly Head himself
announced that he would act as guide; and, with the voyageurs to lead
him, made his way to Thompson's camp.

The noble and manly conduct of the Indian inspired the little party
with great confidence and hope.  Under his leadership, they made
their way among the rugged hills, avoiding the inundated meadows.
The raging torrents they passed by throwing bridges of trees across
them.  Finally they reached the Kootenay river not far below the
portage; and here, after building a canoe to complete their journey,
they took leave of their guide.  In a short time they were safe at
Kootenay House.

Thompson had now to conduct the winter's hunt all the way east to
Rainy River House, and bring back supplies for the following year.
Among these supplies were two kegs of alcohol, which his partners
insisted that he should take with him.  Thompson was well aware of
the deplorable results that had followed the introduction of spirits
among the Indians, but he was overruled.  When he came to the defiles
of the Saskatchewan, he caused the two kegs to be loaded on the back
of a vicious horse.  By noon the kegs were empty and broken to
pieces.  He wrote to his partners, telling them what he had done, and
vowing that so long as he was in charge of the fur trade across the
mountains, he would do the same with every keg of alcohol which was
sent to him.  He was as good as his word; and thus for a few years at
least succeeded in keeping the curse of spirits from the Indians of
the Pacific slope.

When Thompson reached Kootenay House, the season was too far advanced
to allow of further exploration.  He therefore sent Finan McDonald to
open a trading house at Kootenay Falls, while he himself remained for
the winter at the post, taking observations and trading with the
Indians.  In the following spring, he had once more to cross the
mountains with the furs, but by midsummer he was back at his house
ready to prosecute his discoveries further to the south.

In the neighborhood of the Falls, Thompson had found that the
Kootenay river bent sharply to the west and north.  In this
direction, he had traced its course to Kootenay lake, before the
floods came on, compelling him to cross overland to his home under
the guidance of the chief Ugly Head.  To the south of the Kootenay
was a ridge of mountainous country, intersected however, by
well-marked Indian trails running north and south.  These trails, he
was told, led to another great river, parallel with the Kootenay and,
like it, flowing mainly to the west.  This river (now known as
Clark's Fork) he made up his mind to explore.

His point of departure was from Ugly Head's encampment, near the
present site of Bonner's Ferry, Idaho.  There he laid up his canoes,
and borrowed horses from the Kootenays for the journey across
country.  A two day's ride brought him to Clark's Fork at the point
where it expands to form Lake Pend d'Oreille.  Here he was met by a
large deputation of Salish Indians, who welcomed him with presents
and gave him every assistance in finding a site suitable for the
erection of a post.  Their joy was easy to understand, for they were
armed merely with a few rude lances and flint-headed arrows, utterly
useless in warfare against the Indians of the plains.  Thompson had
guns, ammunition, and iron arrow-heads for trade, but he warned them
that in order to procure these advantages, they must learn to be
industrious in hunting for beaver and other furs, and cease spending
their days and nights in gambling--the pet vice of the savage.  This
they eagerly promised to do.

It was the end of September before he had finished the construction
of his new post (Kullyspell House), and he followed it up, by
constructing a second post, Salish House, sixty miles further east
along the river.  From Salish House, he had only to ride out to the
great camp of the Salish Indians near Flathead lake in order to
secure the promise of their trade.  He was now thoroughly established
along the whole course of Clark's Fork river.

From information he had gathered, Thompson judged that both the
Kootenay river and Clark's Fork were tributaries of the Columbia, and
that if he followed them westward to their mouths he would strike
that mighty river.  From the unwelcome visitations he had experienced
at the hands of the Piegans, he realized that the line of approach
from the defiles of the Saskatchewan to his new trading post was
exposed throughout its length to raids of the plainsmen through the
easy passes of the mountains.  He therefore attempted to explore
Clark's Fork to its junction with the Columbia, hoping that from
thence he might discover a route further west and less accessible to
his foes.

For some time he followed the course of the river westward through a
country of extensive meadows and forests, enriched by innumerable
streams of pure water, and already in March responding to the
generous rays of the sun, and the warm breezes from the ocean.  But
as he approached the mouth, the appearance of the land was changed.
Rude blocks of basalt made the country difficult for horses; the
stream, tumbling in countless rapids and falls, was unnavigable for
canoes.  He was forced to turn back; and as the winter's furs were
waiting for his arrival, he made his way to Kootenay House and
thence, to the dépôt on Rainy river.

In the course of the winter the Salish Indians had traded upwards of
twenty muskets and several hundreds of iron arrow-heads, and by dint
of constant practice had become so proficient in their use that they
felt themselves a match for the Indians of the plains.  In the month
of July, when the bison bulls were getting fat, they formed a camp of
not less than 150 men to hunt and make dried provisions as Thompson
had asked them to do.  With Finan McDonald, Michel Bourdeaux and
Baptiste Buché to help and encourage them, they crossed the mountains
by an easy defile to the east of Flathead lake, and boldly preceded
to hunt for the buffalo.

It was not long before the Piegans got wind of their presence.  One
morning, the scouts came riding into camp at breakneck speed with the
cry, "The enemy is upon us."  Down went the tents, and tent poles and
baggage were quickly formed into a rude rampart.  This was barely
ready, when the enemy's horsemen came dashing at the rampart with
wild shouts of rage.  The Salish stood their ground; and neither a
second nor a third charge was able to shake them.  The battle was now
to be of infantry.  The Salish lay quietly behind their ramparts
awaiting the assault; while all day long the enemy advanced in
parties of thirty or forty, shouting insulting cries and doing their
best to lure them from their cover.  As often as they came within
gunshot, they were met with a fusilade of bullets.  At nightfall they
retired discomfited, leaving the Salish in possession of the field.

This was the first occasion on which the Salish had ventured to face
the Piegans in the open field, and although no scalps were taken on
either side, they counted it a victory to have stood their ground.
As for the Piegans, their hearts were full of bitterness; and they
swore an oath to wreak vengeance on the white men who had crossed the
mountains to the west, and furnished arms and ammunition to their
age-long foes.




CHAPTER VII

THE RACE TO THE SEA

By the middle of October, 1810, Thompson was once more at the foot of
the Rockies en route for the Columbia with four canoe loads of
supplies.  At Rainy River House, he had learned that a vessel
chartered by J. J. Astor and loaded with goods in charge of two
former North West traders was on her way around Cape Horn, bound for
the Columbia; and his orders were to anticipate this ship in reaching
the mouth of the river.  He was therefore anxious to get through the
passes without delay, and at all costs to avoid a conflict with the
Piegans.

Since the 24th of September the brigade had been held up in the
neighborhood of Rocky Mountain House.  The post was thronged by noisy
bands of Piegan, Sarcee, Blood, and Fall Indians, who had come
ostensibly to trade, but really to head off any movement of the white
man toward the mountains.  Alexander Henry, the trader in charge,
endeavoured to get rid of these unwelcome visitors, but all in vain.
In such a crisis, the time-honoured expedient was rum.  While some of
the Indians were drunk, however, others were sober, and for some
weeks it was impossible to get the canoes away without observation,
either by day or night.  Finally, however, Henry got the frightened
voyageurs under way, and by the 13th of October, the brigade was
already within twenty miles of the mountains.

Thompson himself with a partner, William Henry, and two Indian
hunters had ridden ahead to the gap, scouring the country for game
and keeping a sharp watch for possible enemies.  The party had killed
three red deer, made a scaffold, and placed the meat on it for safety
against wild animals.  Days passed, and the canoes did not put in an
appearance.  On the 17th the oldest hunter, rising as usual very
early in the morning, looked at the scaffold and remarked, "I have
had bad dreams; this meat will never be eaten."  So saying, he
saddled his horse and rode away.

Thompson could no longer conceal his anxiety.  He ordered Henry and
the other Indian to proceed down the river in search of the canoes;
with positive orders not to fire a shot except in self-defence.  At
eight in the evening they returned, and he heard their story.  Some
miles down the river, they had seen a number of Piegans encamped on
the bank.  A short distance below this camp, they had descended the
slope to the river, where they found the marks of canoes and near
them in the bottom a rude rampart of stones on which there were
traces of blood.  Proceeding further down stream, they had fired a
shot as a signal to the lost canoemen, but it was not returned.

Thoroughly alarmed by their rashness and folly, Thompson prepared to
fly for his life, for he knew that the Piegans would be on them in
the morning.  At dawn of day, they took horse and made their way east
by a wide detour through the forest.  Fallen trees and undergrowth
interrupted their progress, and their horses' hoofs made their track
easy to follow.  Fortunately the afternoon brought with it a light
fall of snow, giving them some hope of shaking off their pursuers,
and late in the evening they ventured to halt and kindle a small fire.

Racked with fear for his own safety and anxiety for the fate of his
men, Thompson passed a sleepless night.  His first care was to find
the brigade.  Avoiding Rocky Mountain House, he continued east for
sixty miles along the river, and there, on the second afternoon, he
came upon his men, safe and sound, encamped in an abandoned
trading-post known as Boggy Hall.

All hope was now abandoned of passing in safety by the defiles of the
Saskatchewan, and Thompson determined to blaze a new trail across the
Rockies by way of the Athabaska river.  The route projected lay over
an old path of the Assiniboine Indians to a point on the Athabaska
not far from the present line of the Canadian National Railways; and
from thence along the valley of the river past the mouth of
Yellowhead Pass to its headwaters some miles further south.  From
this point a pass led across the height of land to the Wood river, a
small tributary of the Columbia.  In later years this pass (known as
the Athabaska Pass) was the regular route for traders of the Hudson's
Bay Company on their journeys to British Columbia.

Horses and dogs were rapidly collected for the trip over land.  The
men were detailed to their several duties, four to hunt, two to clear
a path through the woods, and the remainder to look after the animals
and perform the labour of the camp.  By the 28th of October all was
in readiness; and the little party set off with Thomas, an Iroquois
Indian, to act as guide.

It was a full month before they had crossed the belt that lay between
them and the Athabaska.  The road ran through a wretched country,
over mountains and across muskegs.  Here and there the fires of the
forest had cut wide swathes through the woods, leaving in their wake
a tangled mass of fallen timber, through which they had to hack their
way.  In the bogs the horses lost their footing, shifting their packs
and bruising their knees, until in a short while they were almost
useless.  To complete the misery of the travellers, there was the
difficulty of securing food.  Their dried provisions were soon
exhausted.  Game was scarce; and the hunters often returned
empty-handed after a long day's chase.

By the first of December they had reached the Athabaska.  Four days
later they had come to a point on the river a little above Brulé
lake, where the guide informed Thompson that owing to the lateness of
the season, all thought of crossing the mountains with horses had to
be given up.  The greater number of the beasts were therefore sent
back to Rocky Mountain House; four only were retained to ease the
burden of the dogs.

The thermometer now registered 32° below zero; and the party threw
themselves into the work of building a rough shelter of logs to serve
while they prepared sleds and snow shoes with which to complete their
journey.  At the end of the month they made a fresh start.  Urged by
the shouts and lashings of the voyageurs, the dogs with their burdens
scurried along the ice of the river.  In five days they came to the
grassy ponds that marked its headwaters--the last possible pasturage
for horses.  Here, therefore, the poor animals were turned loose to
survive the winter as best they could.

Four days more brought the party to the height of land.  The
landscape, as far as the eye could reach, was clothed with a heavy
mantle of gleaming snow.  Round about towered the lofty peaks, their
sides scarred by avalanches which had swept the slopes bare of trees
and rocks in their descent.  To the right lay an enormous glacier, a
mass of blue-green ice, the eastern face of which was not less than
two thousand feet in height.  The night was fine, and the stars shone
with such brilliance that one of the men told Thompson that he felt
he could almost touch them with his hands.

Early next morning they began the descent to the valley of the
Columbia.  On the eastern face of the mountains, the approach to the
height of land had been a long and steady climb.  To the west, the
ground fell away in a series of abrupt slopes, so steep in places
that it required sure footing to avoid a tumble.  A short advance
therefore was enough to produce an amazing difference in the climate.
The snow which to the east of the mountains was thin and dry, here
lay heavy and wet upon the ground; and they entered a forest of clean
grown pine of gigantic height and girth.  So heavy were the loads and
so steep the slope that the dogs were unable to guide the sleds, and
from time to time they came against the base of a pine tree with
considerable force, dog on one side, sled on the other, so that they
were disentangled with difficulty.  To relieve the animals, Thompson
had a portion of the loads removed from the sleds.  The men grumbled
as they were forced to lug these packs forward through the heavy
snow.  Finally after fifteen days' travel they arrived at the banks
of the Columbia.

Mutterings of discontent were now openly heard among the French
Canadians.  They had had enough, and would follow the madman no
further.  Four of them suited the action to the word and deserted.
Two of the others Thompson despatched with letters to William Henry,
describing the route he had discovered, and ordering Henry to follow
him along it with an additional supply of goods.  With the remainder,
Thompson set forth on the journey up the Columbia.  They had gone but
one day when they, too, balked at the restless energy of their
leader.  Faced with incipient mutiny, Thompson had no choice except
to return to the mouth of the Wood river, and there pass the rest of
the winter.

The place of his enforced residence was the famous "Boat Encampment"
of later days.  At this point, the Columbia, after having pursued a
north-westerly course for upwards of two hundred miles from its
sources, bent sharply around the head of the Selkirk Mountains, and
flowed off to the south.  At the bend, the stream was joined by two
tributaries, the Wood and Canoe rivers, coming in from the north, and
forming at their mouths a wide meadow of rich alluvial soil.  There
in the midst of a forest of giant pine and larch, the party cleared a
site, and built themselves a rough cabin.   Thompson, never idle,
spent his time exploring the neighbourhood, and constructing a boat
for the remainder of the journey.  As there was no birch bark
available, he built it clinker-fashion of cedar boards split thin;
and these, in default of nails, he sewed together with the fine roots
of the pine.

The snow was not yet off the ground when he was once more on his way.
He had counted on reaching the mouth of the Columbia not later than
the first of August, and would gladly have made the descent by way of
the river itself, which here lay clear before him.  Of his canoemen,
however, three only had the courage to risk the chances of the
voyage.  With so few men it would have been madness to venture a long
journey on unknown waters and in the midst of possible enemies; so he
determined to make his way past his old trading posts to the Salish
country.  There he knew he could find plenty of free hunters to help
him in accomplishing the voyage to the sea.

It was six weeks before he had reached Salish House, where he hoped
to find Finan McDonald.  But neither McDonald nor Jaco Finlay was at
the post, and, as they had left no letter to indicate their
whereabouts, Thompson prepared to descend Clark's Fork by himself.
The river presented an appearance vastly different from that of the
autumn of 1809, when he had passed down it before.  The spring floods
were now at their height, and the water was rising at the rate of two
feet each day, inundating the meadows to the foot of the hills, and
dashing along with such violence that every island became a
water-fall, with a strong eddy at the lower end.  Down this raging
torrent they paddled, keeping in midstream, and thankful as they
passed each danger spot in safety.  The antelopes had retired to the
hills, and they lived on the meat of horses which they traded from
the Indians.

On the 8th of June they arrived at the point where the river entered
the Box cañon and became utterly unnavigable.  There Thompson found a
small camp of Kullyspell Indians, who informed him that Finan
McDonald was now at a post which he had built on the banks of the
Spokane river further south.  Thompson engaged two of these Indians
to inform McDonald of his presence; while he himself waited until the
latter should join him with horses to carry his goods overland to the
new post.  Four days later McDonald, with thirteen horses, arrived;
and Thompson with all his possessions was transported overland to
Spokane House, about ten miles northwest of the present city of
Spokane.

The Spokane river, like Clark's Fork, was a tributary of the
Columbia, and, like it, unnavigable toward the mouth.  Thompson
therefore left a small assortment of goods with McDonald, and
proceeded northwest along a well-beaten Indian trail to a point on
the Columbia, just below Ilthkoyape or Kettle Falls.  Here the stream
dropped several feet in two magnificent cataracts, the roar of which
could be heard for many miles around.

Just below the falls was an Indian village, the first of its kind
that Thompson had seen.  It was composed of a number of huts, each
from thirty to sixty feet in length, roughly built of large cedar
logs which had drifted down the river, and roofed with mats of woven
fibre stout enough to withstand the rain.  The Indians who dwelt here
subsisted mainly on fish.  Each spring, as the spawning season drew
near, they propitiated the manito of the salmon with elaborate dances
and ceremonies.  Thus purified, they took their stand just beneath
the falls and speared or netted the fish, which they smoked in
quantities sufficient to last them through the year.

Thompson enquired of these people regarding the course of the river
both up and down.  From them he learned that the village at Kettle
Falls was the highest along the stream that had survived the
incursions of the Piegans.  Below them there was a journey of ninety
miles of rapids, at the end of which stood another village of salmon
fishers.  Beyond this they could tell him nothing.  Meanwhile the
canoemen were busy preparing a boat.  In this region timber was very
scarce.  They had to journey seven miles from the river before they
found a clump of cedar from which they could hew the planking of a
canoe; and it was not until the third day of July that the boat was
finished.

With five French Canadians, two Iroquois Indians, and a couple of the
natives for interpreters, Thompson now embarked on the last stage of
his journey to the sea.  He remembered how, following the settlement
of the international boundary west of Lake Superior, the traders of
the North West Company had been driven from a country which they had
made their own.  By that settlement, the forty-ninth parallel had
been accepted as the line from the Lake of the Woods to the watershed
of the Rocky Mountains.  West of the Rockies however, all was still
debatable land; and in that vast region, with its timbered mountains
and rich valleys, the wealth of fish in its rivers and of minerals
hidden in its bosom, he claimed the right of a discoverer.  At the
stern of his little craft, the Union Jack floated proudly in the
breeze; and at each halting place, Thompson posted a written notice
in the name of the North West Company of merchants from Canada,
formally taking possession of the country for His Majesty, King
George the Third.

Down the river sped the canoe, the paddlers with long swinging
strokes easily keeping abreast of the stream.  Most of the rapids
they were able to shoot; and before nightfall they had completed the
ninety miles to the village of which they had heard above.  Tents
were pitched and Thompson summoned the chiefs to smoke with him.

In a short while the chief arrived, followed by his men in single
file.  All sat down in a circle about the tent, and the chief made a
brief speech, welcoming the strangers and offering them presents of
dried salmon and native herbs.  Pipes were then lighted and solemnly
passed round.  Following this the chief delivered a long harangue, in
which he expressed the hope that the white men would provide his
people with guns, ammunition, axes, knives, awls, not to mention
steels and flints and many other articles of which they stood sadly
in need.  They were, he said, able and willing to hunt, and would pay
for everything they got.  At present, however, they had only their
hands with which to procure food and clothing.

Thompson explained that his object was to explore the course of the
river to the sea.  If it proved navigable, very large canoes would
come from over the ocean with goods of all kinds, and industrious
hunters would be supplied with everything they required.

The colloquy finished, permission was given for the women of the
tribe to approach.  A dance of welcome followed, at the end of which
the weary travellers were left to their repose.  In this way Thompson
made friends with the natives wherever he found them along the river.

As he advanced, Thompson passed out of the forest country, and
entered the arid plain that lies about the confluence of the Snake
river with the Columbia.  Occasional willows and cottonwoods were to
be seen, growing in the neighbourhood of streams; but over the
greater part of this region, the only shrub capable of finding a
lodging was the hardy sage.  The natives he now encountered were of
the unhappy Snake family, who had been driven for refuge to this
barren country by the relentless pressure of their foes.  Some of
them fled in terror at his approach.  Others, less timid, gazed with
admiring eyes upon the guns, kettles, axes, and other paraphernalia
of his camp.  Their eagerness to obtain such wonders was in
proportion to their need; for they did not appear to possess even
bows and arrows or the stone axes and knives that were common among
the Eskimos of the far north.

The river now turned to the west; and far ahead on his left Thompson
discerned the snow-capped cone of Mount Hood, which marked the line
of the Cascade Mountains near the coast.  Fifty miles short of this,
he came to a village at which, as usual, he put ashore.  Here the
natives warned him of the treacherous Dalles or rapids just ahead,
where the river for a distance of two miles glides noiselessly
through a cañon never more than two hundred yards wide, and the
ledges of basalt, projecting into the stream, create whirlpools and
eddies in which the traveller is sucked to his death.  At the same
time, the natives informed him that at the mouth of the river, a
party of white men who had come in a great canoe from the ocean, were
busy erecting a house.  Thus he learned that the Astorian party had
anticipated him in reaching the mouth of the Columbia.

A guide from the village carried him safely through the Dalles, was
paid, and returned to the village.  Fifty miles further down stream,
Thompson approached "the Cascades," where the river cuts through the
deep lava beds of the Cascade mountains and makes a descent of about
three hundred feet.  Here the cañon was no less than six miles long,
and nearly a mile in depth.  Trying in vain to secure a guide,
Thompson entered the rapids alone.  For three miles he "ran" the
rapids; a portage of one mile followed, taking him past the worst
stretch of the river; he then re-embarked, and emerged in safety to
the quiet water below.

There was still one hundred and fifty miles to the mouth of the
river; but the magnificent forests of Douglas fir, cedar, and hemlock
which now clothed the country told them that they had come within the
beneficient influence of the sea.  Two days' paddle brought them to
Tongue point, beyond which they had a full view of the ocean.  To the
left, not more than a couple of miles distant, they beheld four low
log huts, constructed of timbers newly cut--in the words of Thompson,
"the famous Fort Astoria of John Jacob Astor and the United States".

At Fort Astoria, Thompson was welcomed by Duncan McDougall and David
Stuart, old colleagues in the service of the North West Company.  As
their guest, he spent a week at the post taking observations for its
position and preparing for the return voyage.  Toward the mouth of
the river, the natives had been demoralized by their association with
wandering traders from the sea; and remembering their surly behaviour
and menacing looks, Thompson saw to it that his men had their arms in
readiness.  On the 22nd of July, he embarked.  At the Cascades, he
was forced to appeal to the natives for assistance in climbing the
rapids.  The scoundrels were importunate in their demands.  With
knives in their hands and poisoned arrows in their bows, they were
ready to kill and plunder the travellers.  But the courage and
resolution of Thompson warded off the crisis; and once above the
Cascades he was again among the poor but friendly savages of the
interior.  Thompson was anxious to avoid the ninety miles of rapids
below Kettle Falls.  When he came to the mouth of the Snake river, he
turned up this stream and ascended it as far as the present Lyon's
Ferry.  From thence, having borrowed horses of the natives, he
journeyed overland across the sterile, sandy plain as far as Spokane
House; and from Spokane House, with the assistance of Jaco Finlay, he
once more reached the Columbia above Kettle Falls.  There, building a
fresh canoe, he re-embarked and made his way through the Arrow lakes
to the Boat Encampment, thus completing his survey of the Columbia
from its source to its mouth.

The following winter Thompson spent inspecting his various posts, and
distributing among them additional supplies of goods which he had
received from beyond the mountains.  From Salish House, he rode east
along Clark's Fork to a hill top within the limits of the present
city of Missoula; and from thence he was able to trace the route of
Lewis and Clark through the Bitter Root Mountains to the banks of
Snake river.

In the spring he was once more back at Kettle Falls, where the furs
from the winter's hunt were being collected.  The results were
excellent; six canoes had to be made ready to accommodate the packs.
By the 22nd of April, his preparations were complete.  The brigade
set off by way of the Columbia, Athabaska pass, and Churchill river
route to Fort William.

In the summer of 1812, when Thompson arrived at Fort William after
his last journey from beyond the Rockies, he was in the forty-third
year of his life.  It was twenty-eight years since he had landed as
an apprentice on the shores of Hudson Bay; and twenty-three years
since he had actively embarked on his career as a surveyor.  During
all this time he had been constantly accumulating materials for his
great map of the North West.  His work was now complete; so that
instead of returning to the interior, he joined the annual brigade of
great canoes bound for Montreal.  Thus did David Thompson bid adieu
forever to the Great North West.




CHAPTER VIII

LAST YEARS

In 1812, hostilities had broken out between the British Empire and
the United States, and the flame of war was raging along the
international border.  In the St. Mary's river, the voyageurs of the
North West convoy with which Thompson was travelling feared that
American troops might intercept their rich cargo of furs, but they
passed through the narrows without being molested and were soon safe
among the islands of the north shore of Lake Huron.  From thence they
made a speedy passage up the French river and down the Ottawa to
Montreal.

His country endangered, Thompson accepted a commission in a battalion
of infantry then being raised by his old colleague Roderick
Mackenzie, but it does not appear that he was ever on active service.
The winter of 1813-4 he spent in preparing a final draft of his map.
This map, in which was embodied the record of his life work, became a
proud possession of the North West Company.  For many years it
occupied a place of honour on the walls of the banqueting hall at
Fort William.

When the war was over, Thompson was selected as British
representative on the commission which surveyed the international
boundary from the River St. Lawrence to the Lake of the Woods.  This
task occupied him for the next ten years, and was concluded in the
autumn of 1826.

At this time, Thompson planned to offer to the public an edition of
his map, and even went so far as to prepare a prospectus.  This
prospectus is worth reproducing, because it sets forth in Thompson's
own words the achievements of his career as a geographer:


"PROSPECTUS"

"To be published in England, by David Thompson, a new and correct map
of the Countries in North America; situated between the parallels of
45 degrees; and 60 degrees of North Latitude; and extending in
longitude from the east side of Lake Superior, and Hudson's Bay,
quite across the Continent to the Pacific Ocean; and from his own
local knowledge; being the result of 22 years employment in
discovering, and laying down the several rivers, lakes, hills and
mountains on this extensive tract of country; many parts of which had
never before been explored; these discoveries were only finished in
1812.  The whole founded on astronomical observations, the author
being an astronomer by profession.

"A small part of this work has already found its way to the public,
being copies of a rough map laid before the North West Company of
Canada.

"Of these regions the map makers have no doubt given the best
delineation they could acquire; but of what was known, so little was
founded on astronomical observations; and their being obliged to fill
up the vacant space with what information they could procure, has led
them into many errors.

"In this map now offered to the public, almost all the great rivers
on the above part of the continent, on both sides the great mountains
are traced to their sources; the sources of the Mississippi, and
several other great rivers, and the shores of Lake Superior, have
been examined and laid down by the author only.

"The position, extent and height of the hills and mountains, have
engaged much of his attention; of which he has many landscapes.  The
last six years of his discoveries were on the west side of the
mountains to the Pacific Ocean.  Each Indian Nation's Territories,
with their limits, and the places of the trading settlements will be
marked out.

"The courses and distances, (taken when necessary to 100 yards,) with
their calculations, etc., the astronomical observations, and rough
maps on the scale of one inch to a mile, on which these maps are
founded will be open to the inspection of the curious, while the work
is publishing; and it will doubtless afford much speculation to the
scientific, to find many of the great rivers of North America taking
their rise in a small compass, and going off to the different seas
like Radii from a centre.

"To render the map more general, and to give connection to all the
parts, the author will avail himself of the Sea Coast of Hudson's Bay
and the Pacific Ocean, etc., etc., as laid down by the latest
navigators and travellers; whatever he has not personally examined
himself, will be in a different colour, and the authority mentioned.

"Nothing less than an unremitting perseverance bordering on
enthusiasm could have enabled him to have brought these maps to their
present state; in early life he conceived the idea of this work, and
Providence has given him to complete, amidst various dangers, all
that one man could hope to perform.

"The map will be engraved in a neat, chaste manner, combining
elegance and economy, on the scale of 3 inches to one degree of
longitude and will form either a map or an atlas at the will of the
subscriber.

"The arduous survey, on which the author is at present employed does
not permit him to present the Public with a description of these
Countries and the nations of aborigines.  This he hopes to perform as
soon as time permits.

"It is expected the geographical map will be ready for delivery to
the subscribers by the latter end of the summer of 1820 at the latest.

"These parts of North America have long been a desideratum on
geography.

"He also offers to the scientific public, of the same size as the
general map, a chart to contain only the grand features of this part
of the Continent, such as the great mountains and hills, the
principal rivers and extensive lakes; as he proposes to delineate on
this chart, the position and extent of the coal mines; of the various
beds of different kinds of stone and rock; of the great meadows and
forests; the limits of the countries on which the Bison, Elk, Red
Deer, Wild Sheep, etc., etc., are found; the line of the old, and new
portions of this part of the continent; the line of the position of
the Countries, over which, is the most constant appearance and
greatest brightness of the Aurora Borealis; and the line that bounds
their appearance to the westward, beyond which they are not seen; and
whatever else he may deem worthy of remark; all of which could not
have been delineated on the geographical map without causing
confusion."


The terms of this prospectus reveal in striking fashion the
scientific spirit in which Thompson's great work was conceived; but
if he hoped that the learned world would welcome and support his
efforts, he was doomed to disappointment.  In the early years of the
nineteenth century, interest in the interior of North America was
confined to very few persons.  It may have been that the number of
subscribers was inadequate.  It may have been that no publisher would
take the risk of issuing the work.  At any rate the map and chart
which Thompson projected never saw the light of day.

At the conclusion of his labours on the International Boundary
Commission, Thompson felt himself in a position to retire.
Throughout his working career, he had always enjoyed a good salary.
With part of his savings, he purchased a comfortable house at
Williamstown in the county of Glengarry, where he settled down with
his wife and growing family.  It was there, on the 4th of March 1829,
that the last of his thirteen children was born.  With characteristic
public spirit, he entered into the life of the community.  When the
Presbyterians of Williamstown desired to build a church, he lent them
money with which to do so.  As his sons grew to manhood, a
considerable amount of his savings was required to set them up in
business.

Thompson's declining years were clouded by financial worries, which
were largely the result of his generous and honourable disposition.
The congregation whom he had assisted were unable to pay off their
mortgage, so he deeded to them the church and grounds.  His sons
failed in business, and in discharging their debts, he seriously
crippled himself.  He sold his home at Williamstown, and removed to
Longueuil, near Montreal, where there were greater opportunities of
securing employment.  Resuming his old occupation, he surveyed the
canoe route from Lake Huron to the upper Ottawa.  This was in 1837,
and some years later he surveyed the shores of Lake St. Peter.

During these years, Thompson worked on the narrative account of his
explorations which he had undertaken to give the world at the time
when he planned to publish his map.  He was anxious also to earn what
money he could from the publication of his book.  It is said that
Washington Irving, the great American writer, and the author of
_Astoria_, wished to buy the manuscript.  Irving, however, was
unwilling to promise that in using it he would give to Thompson the
recognition which he felt was his due; and, jealous to the last of
his reputation, the old man refused to part with his work.  The
manuscript therefore, like the map, lay forgotten, until it was
discovered in recent years, and published in 1915 by the Champlain
Society.

The American Revolutionary War had left a legacy of boundary disputes
which were destined to disturb peaceful relations between Great
Britain and the United States for years to come.  Owing to his work
both for the North West Company and on the International Boundary
Commission, Thompson was better acquainted than most men with the
issues involved in these disputes; and he was convinced that on
account of the stupidity and carelessness of British diplomats, the
just claims of British America had been continuously ignored or
overridden from the time when the original treaty of peace had been
drawn in 1783.  In his narrative, Thompson relates an interesting
story regarding the settlement made in that year.  The story is worth
repeating, not only because it illustrates his attitude toward the
boundary question, but also because of the light it sheds on
conditions in the North West at the time, and the greatness of the
service which Thompson and others performed in mapping the country.

Among the traders, he says, who made their way from Montreal into the
fur countries was a certain Peter Pond, a native of Boston.  Pond was
a man of violent and unprincipled character.  In the winter of
1780-1, he was stationed at Lake La Ronge with orders to act in
concert with Wadin, a fellow trader of the North West Company.  One
evening, while dining with Wadin, he made himself drunk; and in an
outburst of passion shot Wadin through the thigh.  His unhappy victim
expired from loss of blood.

Pond, however, was an energetic trader; and since in those wild times
and remote places the arm of the law was weak, he escaped the
punishment which he richly deserved.  A few years later he had
penetrated to Lake Athabaska, the first white man to do so.  There he
disputed the fur trade with a certain John Ross, who followed him
into the country in the interests of a rival firm.  An altercation
took place between the two traders, and Pond shot Ross dead.

On this occasion Pond was arrested and brought to Canada for trial.
But the authorities at Quebec did not consider that their
jurisdiction extended to the territories of the Hudson's Bay Company,
and the prisoner was set at liberty.  He thereupon returned to
Boston, his native city.

The peace negotiations were at that time in progress.  The
commissioners for great Britain were two honest, well-meaning
gentlemen, who however knew nothing of the geography of the countries
with which they had to deal.  The maps at their disposal were
wretchedly inadequate.  One of them, Farren's, dated 1773, showed the
country as far west as the middle of Lake Ontario.  Beyond that point
the interior was represented as made up of rocks and swamps, and
described as uninhabitable.  Such maps gave every advantage to one
who was personally acquainted with the west, and the United States
commissioners had at their service the expert advice of Peter Pond.

Had the British possessed the slightest idea of the value of the
territories in question, and had they been disposed in the slightest
degree to press their claims, they might have insisted on a line
drawn due west from the middle of Lake Champlain.  Such a division
the Americans would have been glad to accept, for it gave them more
than they could justly demand.  But Pond was at the elbow of the
United States commissioners.  He suggested to them a line passing
through the Great Lakes to the north west corner of the Lake of the
Woods, and from thence westward (as he imagined from his own rough
surveys) to the head of the Mississippi river.  This demand,
exorbitant though it was, the British commissioners accepted, and it
was confirmed by both nations.  Such was the hand (concludes Thompson
grimly) that designated the boundary between the dominions of Great
Britain and the territories of the United States.

The settlement of 1783 was in Thompson's eyes merely the first of a
series of unfortunate arrangements, by which the British dominions
were robbed of extensive and valuable territory.  Edmund Burke had
remarked that a malignant fate seemed to attend all the operations of
Great Britain on the continent of North America.  Thompson, who from
his personal experience knew the land and the people who disputed its
possession, was able to explain in a less mysterious way the failure
of the British to defend their claims against American pretensions.

Accordingly, in the summer of 1840, Thompson addressed a number of
letters to Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley and the Hon. W. E. Gladstone
on the subject of disputed points along the border.  His object was
to urge a prompt and just settlement in each case.  Such a
settlement, he felt, was important if peace was to be maintained with
"so litigious a neighbour."  It was vital, if the steady
encroachments of that neighbour were to be brought to an end, and
Britain was not to be gradually deprived of her hold upon her last
possessions in America.

Thompson therefore endeavoured to arouse the leading statesmen of the
Mother Country to the significance of American policy as he saw it.
The leading men of the United States, he pointed out, all held it as
a maxim that no foreign power had any right to any part of North
America; and that every means ought to be employed to expel this
foreign power.  They were well aware of the insecurity of their
position.  On their northern frontier a powerful foreign nation was
in possession for upwards of one thousand miles.  Their sea coast was
open and exposed.  The numerous slaves in their southern and western
states were ready for revolt; while to the west were seventy thousand
Indian warriors, who had been compelled by force or fraud to quit
their lands, and who could readily be aroused to a war of revenge.

Accordingly, he alleged, the Americans had aimed ever since the
treaty of 1783 to restrict as far as possible the territory of Great
Britain and to destroy her influence over the Indians.  Their method
was to advance claims which, though exorbitant, would be softened and
rendered familiar by the operation of time, and in each case, when
the settlements came to be made, they aimed to be in possession of
the areas in dispute.  British subjects on the other hand had been
compelled to yield ground from point to point, because they could not
rely on the support of the Imperial government if they stood firm.

As he wrote, the situation was acute along the whole length of the
frontier.  On the Quebec border, all the way from St. Regis on the
St. Lawrence to the Connecticut river, the Americans were holding
fast to a line some distance north of the true parallel of 45° which
had been named as the frontier in the original treaty of peace and
confirmed some years later by the award of the King of the
Netherlands.  In the St. Mary's river, American commissioners were
claiming two of the three boat channels and all but two or three
hundred yards of a river bed four miles wide.  If their demands at
that point were granted, Great Britain would surrender the keys to
her northern and western dominions, and shut herself off from
communication with them except by the frozen shores of the Hudson
Bay.  At the head of Lake Superior, the Americans had driven the
British traders from two of the three possible routes joining the
Great Lakes with the Lake of the Woods, and were claiming that the
treaty of 1783 implied a boundary running along the line of the third
and last possible route (the Kaministiquia river), although the very
existence of that route was utterly unknown until at least seventeen
years after the treaty was drawn.  In the present congress they were
again urging the necessity of taking possession of what they called
the "Oregon Territory," and demanding a line down the middle of the
Columbia river to the Pacific ocean.

Thus did the old man endeavour to arm British statesmanship for the
diplomatic contests which he foresaw were inevitable; but his efforts
bore little or no fruit.  On the part of Great Britain, conciliatory
motives continued to prevail; and within a few years, Thompson had
the mortification of seeing even the Oregon territory (that is, all
the fine country south of 49° north latitude which he himself had
discovered) lost to the Empire.  It is not surprising that he fumed
at British diplomats in general, and in particular at "the stupidity
of that blockhead Lord Ashburton."

There is little more to record in the life of David Thompson.
Presently, his eyesight failed, and he suffered the misery of a
destitute old age.  One by one his possessions fell into the hands of
money-lenders.  So poor did he become that he was forced to part with
his precious instruments, and even to pawn his coat in order to buy a
little food.  A late entry of his diary reads, "This day borrowed 2/6
from a friend.  Thank God for this relief."  On the 10th of February,
1857, the long ordeal was ended and Thompson passed away in the
eighty-seventh year of his age.  He was buried in Mount Royal
cemetery without even a stone to mark his grave.

For a long while after the death of Thompson, it seemed as though the
memory of his achievements had perished with him.  But of recent
years his fame, so nearly eclipsed, has shone with renewed
brilliance, and it is now possible to estimate in some degree the
greatness of his character and the magnitude of his work.

In the sheer length of his journeys, few western explorers have
equalled the record of Thompson, for he travelled in all not less
than fifty thousand miles.  Much of this was through country
untrodden by the feet of white men; nearly all of it was in regions
as yet unsurveyed.  The unvarying exactitude with which Thompson
mapped this vast area excited the surprise and admiration of members
of the Canadian Geological Survey who with infinitely better
equipment traced his progresses nearly a century later.  There are
certain districts which since his day have never been re-surveyed;
some of his work therefore still appears on the published maps of
Canada.

Throughout his life Thompson was inspired by a restless impulse to
push forward the exploration and mapping of the west until not a
corner of it remained unknown.  The greatest satisfaction of his
career was undoubtedly the discovering of the Columbia valley.  West
of the Rockies, he was not merely a surveyor and explorer, but in a
real sense an Empire builder, for he added a region of vast and
varied resources to the territories of the Crown.

It is difficult for Europeans to associate with savages without
misunderstandings more or less serious.  The savage governs his life
by an elaborate ritual which he has inherited from his ancestors.
His code is sufficient to cover his dealings with his fellows; but it
fails to guide him in his relations with the strange new beings who
burst in upon him from what is in truth a different world.  The white
man, unless he is gifted with unusual tact and sympathy, treats with
contempt and scorn the customs of the natives and seldom attempts to
understand their ways.  Worse still, he feels himself freed from the
restraints which bind him in civilized life, and frequently gives
rein to the basest passions of his nature.  Thus mutual
misunderstanding too often breeds hatred, and results in the shedding
of blood.

To a surprising degree, the traders of the Hudson's Bay and North
West Companies were able to overcome the difficulties and dangers of
dealing with the Indians, and their relations with them were
correspondingly successful.  Yet even successful traders often lacked
the imaginative sympathy which would have enabled them to submit with
patience to the complicated ritual of Indian life; and standing aloof
as they did from the Indians, they were involved in constant broils
and, not infrequently, in danger at their hands.

Moreover, in the fierceness of their competition, the traders were
too often willing to play sharp tricks on one another, and these
practices taught the Indians evil ways.  To drug the natives with
liquor and steal furs destined for rival firms was a habit only too
common.  It sometimes happened also that small independent traders
had their supplies taken from them, their canoes destroyed and
themselves beaten senseless, so that they were driven from the fur
countries, ruined men.  Individuals like Peter Pond were guilty of
offences more serious still.  Their hands were stained with the blood
of their competitors, and in the rough and tumble of life in the
wilds, their crimes were hard to detect and harder still to punish.
The Indians had learned that the Great Spirit hates to see the ground
reddened with blood.  But when they saw thuggery and murder flourish,
how could they preserve their simple faith?

Throughout his career in the west, Thompson was one of those whose
influence among the Indians was almost wholly for good, and whose
activities shed lustre on the history of the Hudson's Bay Company and
the North West Company, whom they served.  His travels carried him
into the rocky belt south-west of the Bay, over the prairies, through
the western forest, and across the mountains of the Pacific slope.
Wherever he came in contact with the natives, he easily won their
admiration and respect.  This was due to the insight with which he
studied their customs and to the sympathy with which he regarded
their way of life.  For Thompson was infinitely more than a trader:
he had the mind of a scientist and the soul of a poet.

Love of country springs from many roots; but perhaps the deepest
patriotism is that which comes from an intimate knowledge of the face
of the land itself.  Thompson loved the great North West with the
love of a man who knew it in all its moods; for he had journeyed
through it and studied it carefully over a long period of years.  He
foresaw the day when the rolling prairies would be covered with
smiling farms, and the Columbia valley would be the seat of a rich
and vigorous civilization.  In one respect, his vision of the future
fell short of reality.  Living in an age prior to the development of
railways, he failed to see that these regions were destined to be
linked by steel bands with the Canadas in a Dominion stretching from
sea to sea.  He thought of them rather as isolated communities, the
middle west looking mainly for its outlet to Hudson Bay, the Pacific
coast joined to civilization by the paths of ocean.

Characters such as David Thompson are all too rare in the annals of a
nation.  So long as honour is due to great men, his memory deserves
to be enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen; and his high
qualities should be a model to those who inherit the Dominion which
he did so much to make.




BIBLIOGRAPHY

The most important source of information regarding the life and work
of David Thompson is to be found in the _Publications of the
Champlain Society_, Vol. XII. (Toronto, 1915).  This volume contains
the Narrative of Thompson's explorations, edited by Mr. J. B. Tyrrell
with a full general introduction, an itinerary or catalogue of
Thompson's journeys year by year, and notes on the text.  The
manuscript journals of Alexander Henry and David Thompson have been
published, under the title of _New Light on the Early History of the
Great North West_, by Elliott Coues (2 vols., New York, 1897).  In
this work, Henry's journal has been published as a continuous
narrative, and extracts have been made from Thompson's journal to
throw additional light on specific points.  Thompson's original note
books are in the Crown Lands Department, Parliament Buildings,
Toronto.  They are too bulky, and too much encumbered with
mathematical data, to be of interest to the general reader, and so
have never been published as they stand.  An article by Mr. L. J.
Burpee in the _Canadian Historical Review_, vol. IV., 1923, p. 105
ff., contains the prospectus of Thompson's map, and the series of
five letters which he addressed to English statesmen on the subject
of boundary disputes in 1840.

Washington Irving's _Astoria_ presents a graphic picture of the
occupation of the mouth of the Columbia by the agents of John Jacob
Astor.  The narrative contains an interesting account of the
appearance of David Thompson at the newly erected fort, and of the
impression which his arrival made upon the Astorians.

There are short chapters on Thompson in G. Bryce, _History of the
Hudson's Bay Company_, Agnes Laut, _Conquest of the Great North
West_, and W. S. Wallace, _By Star and Compass_.



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