While American barques were still doing a good trade for sea otter along the North West Coast, voyageurs and fur-hunters from Montreal, searching for the River of the West, pushed their frail birch-bark canoes westward from Lake Athabasca to that "immense chain of mountains which run from north to south of the continent of America". Beyond the Continental Divide they found that rivers formed a maze of waterways difficult to untangle. Swiffly-moving mountain streams provided clues to the location of passes and of serene lakes, sheltered valleys, sun-drenched parkiands and fertile lowlands, but seldom did they flow directly westward and nowhere could the traders discover a long, wide river suitable for navigation throughout its length. The wild turbulence of the Fraser River ended in quiet stretches only near the sea; saddle as well as canoe would have to be used to make it the focus of their operations.

Interlopers in the Hudson's Bay Company's preserve, these Nor'Westers, like others of their company before them, had travelled by light canoe from Grand Portage on Lake Superior to the Saskatchewan River, reaching Lake Athabasca by Methy Portage. From Fort Chipewyan, the fur trade of the Mackenzie River basin had already been directed towards the warehouses of Montreal; now, ready to extend their commercial network into the Pacific slope, they sought new beaver ponds and locations in the forest belt where clear lakes and tranquil rivers provided natural pathways for the Indians. On the upper reaches of the Peace and the Fraser they found likely spots, and here, from logs, they built small stockaded posts. These tiny inland trading~centres, so different in plan and conception from the grandiose schemes of Captain James Strange and Richard Cadman Etches for a plantation of felons at Nootka Sound, or the Utopia which a Boston sea-trading firm tried to promote in the wilderness of Vancouver Island, became the nucleus of the first permanent settlements in British Columbia.

The North West Company's advance to the mountains waited on voyages of discovery to the Arctic. In the spring of 1789, while the British fleet was mustering for war with Spain, Alexander Mackenzie, a partner in the Company, whose imagination had been fired by reports of Captain Cook's profitable trade in Alaska and by Peter Pond's theories of a westward-flowing river, left Fort Chipewyan to seek a route to Cook's Inlet. Great Slave Lake was still filled with ice when he reached it, and the longest days of the short northern summer were nearing their end before he could advance to Great Bear Lake. His course from there, instead of leading westward, took him northward down the Mackenzie River to the Frozen Ocean. The myth of a navigable inland sea passage was now demolished.

Scientific curiosity spurred the young Scot to make a second attempt to solve the riddle of the western waterways. In preparation, he spent the winter of 1791 in England perfecting his knowledge of astronomy and of navigation, purchasing new technical equipment and obtaining instruction in its use. On his return to Fort Chipewyan, he deduced from all the available evidence that he could best approach and pierce the mountain ramparts by following the Peace River to its source. He left Lake Athabasca on October 10, 1792, and racing the freeze-up, reached the forks of the Peace and the Smoky Rivers in time to establish a trading-post. By spring, he had drawn this area into the commercial life of the North West Company's Athabasca Department. But his interrogation of the Peace River Indians had yielded little information about his distance from the sea or about the nature of the foothills, mountams and rivers to the west.

His great adventure, his overland voyage to the Pacific Ocean, started on May 9, 1793. Mackenzie and his lieutenant, Alexander McKay, with six voyageurs and two Indians as hunters and interpreters, stepped into a twenty-five-foot-long canot du nord, so well constructed that it carried a ton and a half of baggage-pemmican, instruments and trading goods-in addition to ten men. After sighting the Rockies, the party reached the Peace River Canyon; here it became necessary to raise the canoe up the steep face of the canyon, portage for ten miles over a pathway hacked through the forest, and then pole the canoe, its seams already strained, up the rain-swollen river.

At the forks of the Finlay and the Parsnip Rivers, Mackenzie had to make his first important decision about the choice of a route. Against his better judgment, he followed the treacherous Parsnip River southward. The way became more difficult, the men grew discouraged, and the speed slackened. At last, on June 12, they reached the divide. Only 817 paces away was a small lake, from which flowed a tributary of the Fraser River, a stream so dangerous that Simon Fraser later called it the "Bad River". The canoe was almost shattered in its rushing waters; the voyageurs threatened desertion, but were persuaded to push on after Mackenzie praised their endeavours. On June 17, they enjoyed, after all their toil and anxiety, "the inexpressible satisfaction" of finding themselves "on the bank of a navigable river, on the West side of the first great range of mountains". The Indians called the river "Tacoutche Tesse"; Mackenzie thought it was the Columbia.

Tremendous hazards lay ahead. On June 19, he embarked his party at three o'clock in the morning; half an hour later, in the early morning haze, they slipped past the Nechako River, the most direct route to the Pacific. Shortly afterwards, the walls of the Fraser River contracted. A portage had to be made, and the canoe, now heavy with patchings of bark and gum, cracked as the men bore it on their shoulders. A quarter of a mile along, the exhausted men attempted to run successive cascades; "in a very turbid current, and full of whirlpools", their canoe filled, and they reached the bank in a half-drowned condition.

Below the confluence of the Quesnel and the Fraser Rivers, Carrier Indians, waiting to attack with bows, arrows and spears, lined the river banks. With iron nerve, Mackenzie landed, paraded unarmed, and luring them with mirrors, beads and presents of sugar for their children, gained their confidence. From them, his interpreters learned that the river ran towards the mid-day sun, that its current was uniformly strong, and "that in three places it was altogether impassable". The following day, June 21, a party of Indians at "Stella-yah", "the end of navigation", advised Mackenzie to strike overland by a trail through lowlands, small lakes and rivers, by which they were accustomed to reach after six days' time, the place where they met "the people who barter iron, brass, copper, beads . . . for dressed leather, and beaver, bear, lynx, fox, and marten skins". He had now traveled 400 miles down the Fraser River; a decision to turn back was hound to weaken the confidence of his men, but on the other hand, the season for exploration was far advanced and he had lost most of his ammunition in the Bad River. He decided to return to the West-Road River and there on July 4 two caches were built and the canoe left on a stage "bottom upwards".

During fifteen days' march overland, guides provided by Indian tribes deserted almost daily. Finally, friendly Indians offered to take the party down the Bella Coola River in canoes. At Friendly Village, they were presented with roasted salmon, and from one of his chests the Indian chief produced and displayed articles obtained in trade: a garment of blue cloth, trimmed with brass buttons, probably of British origin, and one of flowered cotton, fringed with leather in the Spanish manner. Further hospitality was extended at a second village. Then Mackenzie came to a deserted village; while inspecting one of its houses, he caught his first sight of an arm of the sea. The journey was nearly Over; "at about eight", on July 20, his canoes glided from the river's mouth into Bentinck Arm.

Paddling toward the open sea, the party continued along Labouchere Channel and down Dean Channel. Here they encountered three canoes filled with disdainful, insolent and angry Indians. One of them, somewhat appeased by Mackenzie's gifts, declared that he and his friends had been fired on from a large canoe which had recently been in the bay by a man called "Macubah" (Vancouver). That night, surrounded by hostile Indians, and tensely expecting attack, but reluctant to leave before he had made observations for latitude and longitude, Mackenzie camped on a rock near Elcho Harbour. At daylight, he mixed "some vermilion in melted grease", and on the rock where he had passed the night, inscribed "in large characters", the brief and unpretentious memorial to the first crossing of continental North America: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three".

By only a few weeks, he had missed Lieutenant Johnstone, who charted the channel for Captain Vancouver. Thirty-three days later he was back at Fort Chipewyan. His failure to reach the open sea was a bitter disappointment; still more bitter was the realization that the difficult route which he had traveled could never he utilized for the fur trade.

In his journal, published in 1801, Mackenzie drew up a master plan for extending British fur trade to "the markets of the four quarters of the globe". Envisaging victory over the Americans, he advocated the union of the Canadian and British fur-trading companies, the Opening of a supply route by way of Hudson Bay, the Nelson, Saskatchewan and "Columbia" Rivers, the founding of regular establishments throughout the interior and on both seacoasts, and entry into the China trade through license from the East India Company. His partners, who were already experimenting with shipments of furs from Montreal to Canton, thought his ideas too ambitious, and instead of seriously considering them, turned their attention to stabilizing the Saskatchewan beaver trade.

For twelve years, the North West Company's struggle for position. in the Canadian fur trade and the intensification of its rivalry with the Hudson's Bay Company, delayed its intrusion into the region beyond the mountains. Then, in 1804, by absorbing the rival XY Company, it gained dominance over the Montreal trade. To provide employment for new personnel and dividends for new shareholders, the partners, concerned about the growing scarcity of beaver in the Saskatchewan valley, decided in 1805 to extend the Athabascan operations beyond the headwaters of the Peace River, and the Saskatchewan trade to the Columbia and Missouri Rivers. Success in the transmontane venture, they knew, depended upon solving the problem of safe and easy transportation routes through the mountains, and between the mountains and the seacoast. In addition, areas must be found which were rich in furs and where the Indian demand for European commodities was not yet satisfied. In the face of stiff competition from the Hudson's Bay Company, difficult problems had been solved before; now, with the confidence born of past successes and the knowledge that the Hudson's Bay Company had no legal rights in the Pacific slope, the North West Company went ahead with its plans.

To open the new western area, the partners chose Simon Fraser, a man of much less scientific training than Alexander Mackenzie, but of indomitable courage. According to Fraser's own admission, the journal he kept was "exceedingly ill wrote worse worded and not well spelt", yet the record of his exploratory work is chiefly marred by the ungenerous spirit which led him to criticize Mackenzie's failure to find the Pack and the Nechako Rivers, the result, Fraser said, of the great explorer's habit of indulging himself "sometimes with a little sleep."

Fraser had the benefit of information provided by David Thompson's survey of the Peace River in 1804 and by James Finlay's earlier examination of the Finlay and Parsnip Rivers. Using Rocky Mountain House as his base, he carried out further investigation of the upper valley of the Peace River in 1805, and then followed Mackenzie's track up the Parsnip River. Changing direction, he turned up Pack River and reached the territory of the Sekani Indians. On McLeod Lake, James McDougall helped him found Fort McLeod, the first post west of the Rocky Mountains. In the autumn, Fraser returned to the present Hudson Hope at the lower end of Peace River Canyon to establish Rocky Mountain Portage as a supply base for the line of western posts which he intended to construct during the following season. While wintering there, he heard that the Carrier Indians were obtaining American goods from the seacoast by way of the Skeena and Babine Rivers. To stop this traffic, he returned to Fort McLeod with John Stuart in the spring of i8o6 and there made preparations for the construction of a post on Stuart Lake. Fort St. James, built during the summer, later became the capital of the fur-trading district which Fraser called New Caledonia. That autumn, the salmon were late in arriving at Stuart Lake, so Fraser sent Stuart to a well-stocked lake forty miles southwest of the Nechako River. They met there late in the year and constructed Fort Fraser. After reinforcements were received late in 1807, Fort George was built at the junction of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers.

The fur-trading posts founded by Fraser in New Caledonia, like the Russian coastal establishments on Kodiak Island and at Sitka, soon combined mercantile pursuits with permanent settlement. Adjacent food and timber resources made them more self-sufficient than the Russian posts, and an overland transportation route, however treacherous its circuitous track from the mountains, kept them better supplied with trade goods. Gradually inter-tribal commerce was drawn inland and away from the seacoast.

Apart from the knowledge obtained by Mackenzie, little was vet known about the speed, direction and navigability of the river which was still thought to be the Columbia. Fraser had tapped only its northern branches; the whole drainage basin might be rich in furs. The brigade arriving from Fort Chipewyan in the autumn of 1807 brought instructions to descend the 'Grand Rivière". Preparations for the voyage were made during the winter months, and on May 22, i8o8, accompanied by John Stuart, Jules Maurice Quesnel, nineteen voyageurs and two Indian guides, Fraser left Fort St. James in four canoes to descend the Nechako River.

He reached Fort George on May 28, and the following day successfully passed down the great muddy Fraser River, arriving at sunset at a clear river flowing from the north-west which he later named in honour of Quesnel, its explorer. On May 30, the company passed through country which at first had a "romantic and pleasant appearance", but just above Soda Creek became extremely rugged. Soon they reached a rapid of "an awful and forbidding appearance"; as portaging through the high rocky hills seemed impossible, Fraser sent his five best men down it in a lightly loaded canoe. Flying from whirlpool to whirlpool, it was dashed against a low projecting rock; to haul it up by line, Fraser and six companions inched their way down a steep bank, where their lives, he wrote, "hung, as it were, upon a thread". The remaining three canoes were portaged. He had reached Stella-yah, the place where Alexander Mackenzie had been forced to turn back. Shuswap Indians advised him to proceed by land across the rolling hills to Thompson River, but he would not deviate from his original intention.

Peril and tribulation increased. On June 2, the river, which was in freshet, rose eight feet within twenty-four hours. By lightening the canoes, the next whirlpools and rapid were safely run. Before attempting another turbulent rapid, Fraser sent men to reconnoitre. Painfully, "their feet full of thorns", they climbed precipices and descended ravines. On their return, they reported more cascades ahead. Then the channel narrowed, and it "being absolutely impossible to carry the canoes by land, all hands without hesitation embarked as it were a corps perdu upon the mercy of this awful tide". Expertly, the voyageurs steered the canoes to safety, but now Fraser was ready to believe Lillooet Indians who told him that the river was "a dreadful chain of apparently insurmountable difficulties". Near Pavilion, he had the canoes placed on a scaffold and goods cached, and started overland.

Well-marked trails led from the Lillooet Indian encampment to Lytton, but the fare of berries, moss and dog flesh was meagre, the men's moccasins were cut by sharp stones, and the pack-loads were heavy. At Lytton, Indians showed him European goods which they said came from across the mountains, and concluding that the large, sparkling river flowing into the main river at that point must lead to the North West Company's posts in the Saskatchewan Department, he named it in honour of David Thompson, who, at the orders of the Company, was then exploring the upper waters of the Columbia River.

Cedar dug-outs obtained from the Indians at Lytton soon had to be abandoned, and the party began to scramble along the river banks. At Black Canyon, one of the Indians climbed to the sulnmit to pull each of his companions up by a long pole; at Hell's Gate, they could scarcely make their way "with even only our guns". "I have been for a long period among the Rocky Mountains," Fraser wrote, "but have never seen anything like this country. It is so wild that I cannot find words to describe our situation at times. We had to pass where no human being should venture; yet in those places there is a regular footpath impressed, or rather indented upon the very rocks by frequent travelling. Besides this, steps which are formed like a ladder or the shrouds of a ship, by poles hanging to one another and crossed at certain distances with twigs, the whole suspended from the top to the foot of immense precipices and fastened at both extremities to stones and trees, furnish a safe and convenient passage to the Natives; but we, who had not had the advantage of their education and experience, were often in imminent danger when obliged to follow their example." With utmost caution, the men crawled along the path to Spuzzum, and on to Yale.

At last the river was navigable. As they paddled dug-outs down the widening stream, they saw Mount Baker in the distance, and marveled at the size of "cedars five fathoms in circumference and proportionate height".

In tidal waters, fierce Cowichans almost blocked their way, but on July 2 they were in sight of the mountains of Vancouver Island and almost ready to enter the Strait of Georgia. At the village of Musqueam, a few miles from the sea, they disembarked to inspect an Indian house, 1,500 feet long and 90 feet wide. They were gone only a short time. In that interval, the ebbing tide beached their canoes, and as they were launching them, hostile Indians suddenly emerged from the forest. The pursuit continued by water. Fraser retreated six miles. Then he arrived at the sorry decision to abandon his expedition. He had had no time in which to make an observation for longitude, but he had discovered that "the latitude is 49º nearly, while that of the entrance of the Columbia is 46º 20'. This river therefore is not the Columbia!" The river flowing towards the mid-day sun was not the River of the West, and Fraser, like Mackenzie before him, had failed to reach the open sea.

To add to his disappointment, the great river which he had examined and which David Thompson named after him8 was unsuitable for transport, and most of the country through which he had traveled below Stella-yah was too warm and too bare to be rich in furs. Inter-tribal jealousies among the Indians of the southern interior, he had discovered, were sufficiently strong to interfere with barter trade, and the Indians near the seacoast were already well supplied with European goods. Of the vast region through which he had journeyed, New Caledonia offered the best prospects, although transportation charges to Montreal on its fine black beaver peltries were too high for great profit. A new outlet and a shorter supply route were needed, and since the Hudson's Bay Company still refused the North West Company access to Hudson Bay, the opening of communication with the Pacific seaboard appeared to offer the best hope for the future of the new trading-district.

While Fraser had been building his posts in New Caledonia, David Thompson, a former Hudson's Bay Company man, already famed for his ability as astronomer and surveyor, had undertaken the expansion of the Saskatchewan Department's trade across the mountains. In May, 1807, accompanied by his wife, his three small children and three men, he traveled west from Rocky Mountain House on the North Saskatchewan River with ten pack-horses to "stupendous and solitary Wilds covered with eternal Snow"9 where "Mountain [is] connected to Mountain by immense Glaciers, the collection of Ages". Here he was delayed by deep snows; when these started to melt, the rush down the mountain sides "equaled the Thunder in Sound, overturning everything less than solid Rock in its Course, sweeping the Mountain Forests, whole acres at a Time from the very Roots, leaving not a Vestige behind". On June 24, the party crossed the height of land to the upper Columbia River, and soon began to follow the course of the wild Blaeberry River. Canoes were built, and the Columbia River was ascended to Lake Windermere. About two miles from the lake, Thompson constructed Kootenae House, the first trading-post in the Columbia basin.

In April, 1808, about a month before Fraser set out to descend the Nechako River, Thompson crossed to Kootenay River, continued down-stream, and after further exploration through the present states of Montana and Idaho returned to Kootenae House. After preparing his furs, he left in June to take them to Rainy Lake.
The following year, 1809, he accompanied his annual shipment to Fort Augustus, near the present city of Edmonton, returned again by way of Howse Pass to the Columbia River, crossed McGillivray's Portage, later to be known as Canal Flat, and again descended the Kootenay River. Going overland he selected a place on Pend d'Oreille Lake to build Kullyspell House and a site near Clark Fork River for Saleesh House. Interest in trading and in exploration had carried him to the south and to the east.

When Thompson again reached Rainy Lake late in July, 1810, he learned something of the plans made by John Jacob Astor, a New York business man, to build a depot on the Columbia River. The North West Company had similar ambitions, and had instructed its agents in London to enquire whether the British government would permit the building of an American establishment, and whether its own aspirations could be assisted by the government's sending a ship to the Columbia and granting a charter of exclusive trade between the latitudes of 420 and 6o~ for a period of twenty-one years. Thompson was given no specific instructions at Fort William, but for two years he had been engaged in surveying the Columbia River, and his interest in completing the project was probably in-creased.

He returned to Rocky Mountain House to discover that Piegan Indians had interfered with the transit of supplies which had been shipped ahead from the east. He decided, therefore, not to use Howse Pass. After manufacturing snow-shoes and sleds, he started on December 29 from Athabasca River to cross the mountains in twenty-degree-below-zero weather. His new route to Wood River and to Boat Encampment at the confluence of the Canoe and the Columbia Rivers later became the highway for the Hudson's Bay Company's express brigades.

In April, 1811, he left the Big Bend in a canoe he had constructed of split cedar to ascend the Columbia River to its source. Again he crossed Canal Flat and descended the Kootenay River. Then, after visiting Saleesh House and newly established Spokane House, he traveled to Kettle Falls, constructed another canoe, and with seven voyageurs and two Indians, started to explore the Columbia River, "in order to open out a passage for the interior trade with the Pacific Ocean".
At the junction of the Snake and the Columbia Rivers, Thompson claimed territory for Great Britain on July 9. The next day he received news that the American traders had arrived on the Columbia River. He continued his survey, filling in the details on his map, and on July 15 reached the mouth of the river, where he found the Americans already established at Fort Astoria. The sea expedition sent by Astor from New York had arrived on March 22; four log huts had been constructed and trading operations in the interior were about to commence.

By founding his depot at the mouth of the Columbia, Astor, the masterful merchant who already traded with Canton and had almost secured control of the south-west fur trade, had hoped to enter the marine fur trade, unite it with the overland trade, and monopolize the China market. His strategy had been worked out by John Meares years before, and Captain James Strange and Alexander Dalrymple, hydrographer, had placed similar proposals before the officers of the East India Company. Sir Alexander Mackenzie and Duncan McGillivray had also urged the feasibility of such a plan, but only now was the North West Company becoming interested in establishing a Pacific outlet.

The Americans received Thompson well and he enjoyed their hospitality for a week. Then, in the company of one of their number, David Stuart, cousin of John Stuart, he left for the interior to visit his posts and to continue trading. Below the junction of the Snake River, the friendly rivals parted, Thompson to return to Spokane House and Stuart to go up the Columbia River to select a site for an inland post.

After leaving Thompson, David Stuart founded Fort Okanogan at the junction of the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers, and then started north through the grass lands of Okanagan Valley. Crossing the height of land separating the Columbia and the Fraser watersheds, he reached Thompson River. Here, at last, was the solution to the problem of communication on the transmontane slope: Stuart had found a land route, admirably suited for transport by pack-train, which could serve to unite the fur districts of the upper Fraser and the lower Columbia Rivers. With Thompson River as the point of contact, the vast hinter-land between the Coast Range and the Rocky Mountains could be organized into a single fur-trading district.

A profitable winter's trade among the Shuswap Indians convinced Stuart that Thompson River abounded in beaver. On his return to Fort Okanogan, Alexander Ross set out with horses on a trading expedition to "Cumcloups", the "meeting of the waters" of the North and South Thompson Rivers. There he found two thousand Indians so anxious to trade that he bartered five tobacco leaves for one beaver skin and one yard of white cotton for twenty prime skins.18 On his return, David Stuart "'ent north with supplies to establish a post. He had hardly completed his building when Joseph Larocque, who had recently arrived from Fort William with the McTavish overland expedition, appeared to found a trading-centre for the North West Company.

Compelled by the challenge of competition to concentrate on 'heir Columbia enterprise, the Nor'Westers had renewed their application to the British government for aid and support in establishing a base on the Pacific. Busy with plans to bring the war with Napoleon to an end, and worried about the deterioration of relations with the United States, Whitehall avoided commitment until after the American declaration of war against Great Britain in June, 1812, when it was persuaded that the commercial enterprise had national significance.

In July, the partners of the North West Company, assembled in annual meeting at Fort William, received David Thompson's report of his trading operations in the Columbia basin and of his recent exploration to the river's mouth. Donald McTavish was immediately ordered to England to arrange for a ship and convoy to be sent to the Columbia, and John George McTavish chosen to lead an overland expedition to the Pacific. John Stuart, appointed supervisor of the New Caledonia district, was instructed to join the overland expedition at some point on the Columbia River the next spring and to travel with it to meet the ship from England.14
In compliance with his instructions, Stuart, Fraser's lieutenant from 1805until 1809, left Fort St. James on May 13, 1813, to search for water communication with the Columbia River. Knowing the Fraser well, he left it above Soda Creek, and taking horses, travelled overland. At a distance of 150 miles he reached Okanagan Lake, leading south to the Columbia River. The final link joining the great waterways had at last been found; Sir Alexander Mackenzie's dream of a great transcontinental commercial network approached realization.

American western competition still had to be eliminated. As it turned out, this was easily achieved. The Astor venture was ill-fated. In August, the Tonquin, the ship which had brought the advance party to choose a location for a trading-centre near the position reached by the American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805, was destroyed, and its crew massacred by Indians in Clayoquot Sound. The party sent overland from Lachine, by way of the Missoun, did not arrive until the spring of 1812. Two more supply and trading-ships met disaster. Of the string of forts which Astor had projected for construction between the Missouri and the Columbia Rivers, only two or three were successfully founded. With every month, prospect of diverting trade from the "Boston pedlars" on the seacoast and from the Canadians in the interior diminished.

Meanwhile, the importunities of the North West Company's agents in London prevailed with the British government, and in March, 1813, the Isaac Todd sailed from Portsmouth under convoy, carrying twenty guns and bearing letters of marque. The overland expedition preceded her. Carrying news of the declaration of war, McTavish arrived at Spokane House late in 1812, and proceeded to Astoria in the spring of 1813. When his supply ship did not arrive, he retired up-river; then, in October, he reappeared with a strong force of 75 men. The plight of the Americans was serious; no supplies had arrived since the spring of 1812 when the Beaver had called at Fort Astoria on her way north to sell trade goods to the Russian posts and to pick up Russian furs for Canton. Their provisions low, the returns from the interior posts disappointing, the grip of the Nor'Westers tightening, and seizure threatened, the associates of the Pacific Fur Company decided on October 16 to sell their posts, property and stock of furs to their rivals.

On November 30, H.M.S. Racoon, 26 guns, the naval escort for the Isaac Todd, arrived in advance of the merchant vessel. The peaceful transaction which had taken place was not at all to the liking of her commander. A man of action, he was not to be denied the pleasure of serving his King by taking possession of the country and running the British flag up over an American fort. "Country and fort I have taken possession of in name and for British majesty. . .", he reported on December 5. "Enemies party quite broke up they have no settlement whatever on this River or Coast."

West of the mountains, the North West Company now had monopolistic control, a Pacific base and an inland transportation system. But the great distances separating fur-producing areas and the employment of additional canoemen, traders and trappers to supply the posts acquired from the Pacific Fur Company, made for high administrative costs. These charges were not, as had been expected, offset by opening the coastal trade. To meet the competition of the Boston vessels, the Company, by employing Sandwich Islanders as seamen, incurred heavy expenses.

Entering the China trade also brought few rewards. When the East India Company declined to issue a licence or permit purchase of tea at Canton, an attempt was made at interloping. After discharging her supplies at Fort George, as Fort Astoria had been renamed, the Isaac Todd carried furs to Canton in 1814, somehow disposed of them at a good price, but had to return to England freighting East India Company tea. Failure to obtain return cargoes of Chinese commodities made later voyages of Company ships equally unprofitable. In1815 an arrangement was made with the Perkins firm of Boston to carry British manufactured goods to the Columbia, load furs for Canton, and invest the funds from the sales in purchases of tea and other Chinese goods for the American market.10 The Nor'Westers paid well for this service, and the American firm made good profits, since it avoided dealing with the Hong merchants.

In the Columbia basin, disgruntied Nor'Westers who had joined Astor's overland expedition from Lachine and been reabsorbed into the Company's service after 1813, carried out an energetic expansion of the land trade. Using the Company's traditional methods, they pushed into all parts of the huge Columbia basin with their packs of trade goods, searching for new Indian tribes. Among them they found such a steady demand for European wares that they were able to establish a high tariff on furs. After 1816, trapping expeditions were out-fitted to go into the Willamette, Umpqua and Snake valleys. New forts were built: Fort Walla Walla in 1818 as a trade centre for the treacherous Nez Percè Indians, and Fort Alexandria at Stella-yah in 1821 as transhipment point for the horse train from Fort Okanogan and the canoe brigade to Fort St. James and the other northern posts.

West of the mountains, the Nor'Westers were for a period of seven years "the great nabobs of the fur trade". Their position assured, some of the traders stationed at the depot at Fort George, losing much of their earlier energy, began to indulge their taste for luxury and extravagance, and failed to keep their clerks and their men fully occupied. Comforts were demanded to compensate for the hardships experienced during years of wilderness life. According to Alexander Ross, a former Astorian, "ship after ship doubled Cape Horn in regular succession, with bulky cargoes to the full of every demand", and even birch rind, still preferred to the fine Coast cedar for canoe construction, was shipped all the way from Montreal to London and round the Horn. In addition to the usual stock of goods kept at frontier posts, Fort George had among its stores such items as ostrich plumes and coats of mail; fustians and velvets; jewelry and perfumery; silk stockings; gloves and unbrellas.
In keeping with this extravagance, a new depot, "a Gibraltar of the West", "more fit for eagles than for men", replaced the little collection of log huts at Fort George. Here, and at Spokane House where there were handsome buildings and a ballroom, traders and clerks sat down to a good table and fine wine, and enjoyed the companionship of attractive native women, music and a supply of fairly entertaining literature. When the complement of men was expanded by importations of Iroquois and Sandwich Islanders, traders had more leisure. In some instances, their lives became almost sedentary as the long, wet, winter months dragged slowly by. Their spirits depressed by the heavy and continuous rainfall, bourgeois and clerks became victims of ennui. Escape from the monotonous recurrence of the same conversational topics was sought in "a renmant of a newspaper . . . even an auctioneers advertisement, or a quack-doctor's puff . "The tempo of life at the depot quickened as the time grew near to despatch the spring brigade to Fort William. Finally, April 1 arrived, and under a salute and with flags flying, the express left by light canoe. With a feu de joie, it was welcomed back on October 20.

Life in New Caledonia had a stark simplicity that was unknown at the Columbia River posts. The duties of Daniel Williams Harmon, a pious Vermont Yankee who was stationed in New Caledonia from 1810 until 1818, occupied no more than one-fifth of his time. Prayer, meditation and reading filled his spare hours. For companions he had his Indian wife, his half-breed children, pure-blooded French-Canadian voyageurs and the Carrier Indians with whom he did his business. Unlike Peter Skene Ogden, who later found the Carriers "a brutish, ignorant, superstitious beggarly sett of beings, lavish of promises", Harmon was happy enough living among them. To establish a hold over the northern Indians, Fraser and John Stuart had already introduced the debt and the lending system: Indians who brought in packs of furs were advanced blankets, capots, tobacco, powder and shot, and those setting out to trap beaver received on credit "Tranches axes Amminition Knives &c". To discourage clandestine trade with the Americans on the seacoast, gratuities of leather, a scarce commodity in New Caledonia, were distributed. Imported from the plains, leather was sometimes carried over a new land route which was being opened through Yellowhead Pass to the headwaters of the Fraser River. Liquor had been introduced: among the Nor'Westers, the New Year's Day "regale" was a great event, and Harmon, although he was embarrassed when Indians obed debauches of voyageurs, permitted Indian chiefs who e his guests at dinner on New Year's Day to drink "a flagon two of spirits".

Provisioning the New Caledonia posts was a constant worry. Supplies of salmon, salted, dried and smoked, were nearly always exhausted about August, and each year there was anxiety lest the run be late or fail altogether. A post required some 25,000 salmon for its annual sustenance; the daily allowance for each man was four. Every effort, including bartering beaver and the most valuable trading articles, was adopted to encourage the Indians to set up more weirs and string more nets. To forestall starvation and avert dependence during summer months on berries and an occasional rabbit, grouse or duck, Harmon seeded small vegetable patches. The potatoes, barley, turnips and carrots which he grew offered a welcome change from the dreary diet of dried fish and cold water. But for survival, salmon was essential, and the appearance of the first fish of the autumn run was an event to be celebrated with rations of rum.

After 1814, New Caledonia was supplied with trading goods brought by ship from England and transported by canoe from Fort George to Fort Okanogan and from there by pack-train to the upper Fraser over the route discovered by David Stuart, Alexander Ross and John Stuart. A few provisions, absolute necessities, arrived by brigade from Montreal and Fort William. Furs collected from the New Caledonia posts were assembled into ninety-pound packets at Fort McLeod. From there, a few were sent to the Columbia for shipment to China, but the greater number were transferred to Fort Chipewyan to join the Fort William brigade to Montreal.
Even more than at Fort George, the arrival of the brigade from the east was occasion for joy. The full-throated songs of the voyageurs ringing through the narrow valleys and rebounding from the mountain walls heralded their approach to the palisades. On the shores of the lakes, the voyageurs dressed in grey blanket coats, leather trousers and gaily striped cotton shirts unloaded precious supplies of spirits, tea and salt, while the traders recounted news from headquarters, and sometimes brought welcome notice of rotation leave.

More often than not, after i8i6, the news had an ominous overtone. For serious troubles had developed in Assiniboia, where the Earl of Selkirk, with the approval of the Hudson's Bay Company, had founded a colony astride the North West Company's main transportation route and provision centre. In 1816, the same year that Simon Fraser, so well and favourably known in New Caledonia, was appointed to take charge of the Company's Red River Department, rivalry with the Hudson's Bay Company erupted into warfare. Avenging the Massacre of Seven Oaks, Selkirk captured Fort William, imprisoned the partners, seized documents and correspondence, and in 1817 arrested Fraser for complicity in the "murder" of Governor Robert Semple and twenty settlers. Long and involved litigation ensued. Violence, although not of the same magnitude, occurred all along the northern fur frontier, for the Hudson's Bay Company, having instituted reforms patterned largely on the North West Company's organization, had acquired a new aggressiveness. In the Far West, its activity was viewed with alarm: Joseph Howse had made a feint towards the Columbia River in 1810, Athabasca had been invaded, and by 1820 John George McTavish expected an imminent thrust towards New Caledonia.27
Nor was this all. In i8i8, under the eyes of an American commissioner, the Union Jack, so jubilantly raised in 1813, was lowered at Fort George by another British naval captain. By successfully arguing that the naval capture constituted an act of war, John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State and future President of the United States, had, under the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, won restitution of the fort to the United States. Since Astor was unprepared to reoccupy it, and the question of title to the region still remained unsettled, the Nor'Westers for the time being continued in occupation and use. The Convention of October, 1818, granted them reprieve for ten years, for although territory east of the mountains was to be partitioned by the 4gth parallel, citizens of both the United States and Great Britain retained the right of free entry to territory in the ultimate west. Underscoring his determination not to let American claims in the Northwest go by default, Adams in 1819 obtained surrender of Spanish rights west of the Arkansas River and north of the 42nd parallel. Two years later, the Russians who in 1812 had established a post at Bodega Bay, 65 miles North of San Francisco, by imperial ukase claimed exclusive rights north of Queen Charlotte Sound. Canadian commercial supremacy was being threatened by the politics of international diplomacy.

Harassed on all sides, the field of its operations over-expanded, lacking a reserve fund, rent by internal quarrels, and nearing the date for the termination of the agreement of 1804 between the wintering partners and their Montreal agents, the North West Company was fast approaching bankruptcy and dissolution. The outbreak of open revolt on the part of the bourgeois against representatives of the Montreal agents at the annual meeting at Fort William in 1819, provided the excuse for one of the wintering partners, Dr. John McLoughlin, to make an indirect approach to officials of the Hudson's Bay Company. When agents of the North West Company also made an overture and enlisted the sympathetic support of members of the British government, the Hudson's Bay Company, concerned about its mounting losses and tired of the long struggle with its competitor, permitted negotiations to be conducted in Montreal and London. In March, 1821, coalition of the two companies became fact. Most of the North West Company's wintering partners, men who had been trained as interlopers, now entered as "commissioned gentlemen" the service of a monopolistic company almost as old and as powerful as the East India Company.

In a period just short of thirty years, the magnetic pull of the overland beaver trade had changed the economic orientation of the Pacific North West. Ties with Canton had weakened and the Lords of the Lakes and the Forests had discovered and opened the principal transportation routes between the mountains and seacoast. Canadian enterprise had underwritten the expense of exploration; Canadian experience in the wilderness had triumphed over obstacles of geography and topography. Montreal had supplied the capital, the organizing ability and the techniques for commercial development. Men garrisoned in the remote trading-posts of New Caledonia knew that even if they had new employers, their professional attachments with Canadian business men had developed into friendships and created bonds with the east which distance and the abandonment of the great canoe route to Montreal could not sever.

Source: Ormsby, Margaret A., 1955. British Columbia: a History. Macmillan of Canada: Vancouver