Henry stays on with McDougall awaiting the coming of Donald McTavish on the Isaac Todd. The long delayed, storm-battered Northwest ship comes tottering in on April 23rd with Governor Donald McTavish drunk as a lord, accompanied by a barmaid, Jane Barnes, to whose charms the dissipated old man had fallen victim at Portsmouth. Old punk takes fire easiest. What with rum and Jane Barnes to ply it, Astoria was not a pretty place for the next few weeks. Masters and men “gave themselves up to feasting and drinking all the day.” Sometimes in his cups, McDougall would forget that he had become a Nor’Wester and rising in his place at the governor’s table would hurrah for the Americans till the rafters were ringing. Then Henry would overset table and chairs hiccoughing a challenge to a duel, and the maudlin old governor would troll off a stave that would turn fighting to singing till daylight came in at the windows revealing the gentlemen asleep on the floor, the servants sodden drunk on the sands outside. In May, the weather clears and my pleasure-loving gentlemen setting such an edifying example to the benighted heathen around Astoria, must enjoy a sail across the flooded Columbia. Five voyageurs rig a small boat. In it step the partners, Donald McTavish and Alexander Henry. A stiff breeze is blowing, and a heavy sea running; but they must have a sail up. The boat tilts to the gun’els. A heavy wave struck her and washed over. She sank at once, carrying all hands down but one voyageur, who was rescued by the Chinooks. Thus perished Donald McTavish and Alexander Henry.
Meanwhile, what had Simon Fraser accomplished in the North, while Thompson was exploring the South? Like Thompson, he, too, was ordered to the mountains in 1805. James McDougall, a Northwest clerk, had already followed MacKenzie’s footsteps up Peace River across the mountains to the Forks, when Simon Fraser came on the scene in the fall of 1805. If Nor’Westers are to pass this way to the Western hunting ground, first of all there must be a fort at the entrance to the Pass. Fraser knocks up a cluster of cabins, leaves two clerks and twelve voyageurs in charge and ascends the south fork—the Parsnip. This was the stream where MacKenzie had such tremendous difficulties. Fraser avoids these rapids by going up a western branch of the Parsnip to a little lake narrow and seventeen miles long, set like an emerald among the mountains. There on a point of land beside a purling brook, he built the first fur post west of the Rockies, which he named after the partner, Archibald Norman McLeod. To this day it stands exactly where and as Fraser built it. James McDougall and La Malice, a blackguard half-breed, are left at the fort. Fraser spent three months at the post in the pass, but McDougall goes westward from Fort McLeod to a magnificent lake surrounded by forests and mountains. This lake is the center of the Carrier Indians’ country. To an old Shaman or Medicine Man, McDougall presents a piece of red cloth, telling him white men will come to trade in the spring. Blazing initials on the trees, he takes possession of the country for the Northwest Company. Fraser, at Peace River Pass, has sent the furs East and been joined by the wintering partner, Archibald McGillivray, who has come to take charge, while Fraser explores.
Now it must be kept in mind that Fraser, like MacKenzie, thought the great river flowing south was the Columbia, and setting out from the Pass in May with John Stuart as second in command, Fraser follows the exact trail of MacKenzie—up the Parsnip, down Bad River to the great unknown river. Sweeping south, they come to a large stream coming in from the west—the Nechaco. Will that lead to the Pacific? Fraser ascends it June 11th, only to find that like an endless maze the Nechaco has another branch, the Stuart. They proceed leisurely, hunting along shore, blazing a trail through the forests as the canoes advance, encountering two grizzly bears that pursue the Indian hunter so furiously they flounder over the hunter’s wife, who has fallen to the ground flat on her face with fright, tear the man badly and are only driven off by dogs. It is the end of July before the canoes emerge from the second branch on a windy lake, surrounded by mountains with forests to the water’s edge—the lake McDougall had found the preceding autumn. Carrier Indians tell the legends yet of their tribe’s amazement that July day to see two huge things float out on the water and come galloping—galloping (such is the appearance of rows of paddlers at a distance) across the waves of their lake; but the old Medicine Man dashes out in a small canoe flourishing his red cloth and welcomes the white men ashore. To impress the Carrier Indians, the white men fire a volley that sets echoes rocketing among the peaks; and the Indians fall prostrate with terror. Fraser allays fear with presents, and bartering begins on the spot, for the Carriers are clothed in fine beaver. The white men then clear the ground for a fort. The lake, which McDougall had found the preceding fall and to which Fraser had now ascended, was named Stuart after Fraser’s second officer. It was fifty miles long, dotted with islands, broken by beautiful recesses into the forests and mountains. East were the snowy summits of the Rockies, west and north and south, the mighty hills rolling back in endless tiers to the clouds. Fraser names the region New Caledonia and the fort, St. James.
For some reason, salmon were tardy coming to Lake Stuart this year. Fraser’s provisions were exhausted and his men were now dependent on wild fruit and chance game. Forty-five miles to the south was another lake also drained by the Nechaco to the great unknown river. To avoid having so many hungry men in one camp, Fraser at the end of August sent Stuart and two men southward to this new lake, which Stuart named in honor of Fraser. Blais remains for the winter with voyageurs at Stuart Lake. Fraser goes on downstream, and where the Stuart joins the Nechaco meets John Stuart and hears so favorably of the new lake that the two pole back and build on Fraser Lake the third fort west of the Rockies.
The winter of 1806-7 was passed collecting furs at these posts; and the eastern brigade sent to Peace River with the furs carried out a request from Fraser to the partners of Fort William for more men and merchandise for farther exploration. Back with the autumn brigade in answer to his request came Jules Maurice Quesnel and Hugh Faries with orders for Fraser to push down the unknown river to the Pacific at all hazards. Where the Nechaco joined the great river, Fraser in the fall of 1807 built a fourth post—St. George.
Somewhere from the vicinity of this post, at five in the morning toward the end of May, 1808, Fraser launched four canoes downstream for tide water, firmly believing he was on the Columbia. With him went Stuart and Quesnel and nineteen voyageurs. Eighteen miles down came Fort George cañon with a roar of rapids that swirled one canoe against a precipice almost wrecking it; then smooth going till night camp, when all slept with firearms at hand. Next day, the real perils of the voyage began. Canoes were on the water before the mists had rolled up the hills and the river had presently contracted to a violent whirlpool between rock walls—Cottonwood Cañon. Portaging baggage overland, Fraser ran the lightened canoes safely down. The river passed on the east was later to be known as Quesnel, famous for its gold fields. At Soda Creek, those natives, who had opposed MacKenzie, suddenly appeared along the banks on horseback, and called to Fraser “that the river below was but a succession of falls and cascades,” which no boats could pass. An old chief and a slave joined Fraser as guides and soon enough, the worst predictions were verified. “June 1st, we found the channel contracted to fifty yards, an immense body of water passing through the narrow space forming gulfs and cascades and making a tremendous noise. It was impossible to carry the canoes across land, owing to the steepness of the hills, and it was resolved to venture them,” writes Fraser.
“Leaving Mr. Stuart and two men at the lower end of the rapid to watch the natives, I returned to camp and ordered the five best men into a canoe lightly loaded, and in a moment it was under way. Passing the first cascade, she lost her course and was drawn into the eddy where she was whirled about, the men having no power over her. In this manner, she flew from one danger to another till the last cascade but one, where in spite of every effort the whirlpools forced her against a low rock. The men debarked, saving their lives; but to continue would be certain destruction. Their situation rendered our approach perilous. The bank was high and steep. We had to plunge our daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river. We cut steps in the declivity, fastened a line to the front of the canoe, which the men hauled up, others supporting it, our lives hanging on a thread, as one false step would have hurled us all to eternity. We cleared the bank before dark.”
The amazed Indians made no motion to molest these mad white men, but tried to explain by signs to Fraser that another great river (the Columbia) led by smooth water to the sea. But Fraser thought he was on the Columbia; and “going to the sea by an indirect way was not the object of the undertaking; I therefore continued our route.”
Nevertheless, the Indians were right. The river grew worse and worse. Fraser bought four horses from them and went on, half the men along the shore, half in the canoes. The task of bringing the baggage overland “was as difficult as going by water. We were obliged to pass a declivity, the border of a huge precipice, where the loose gravel slid under our feet. One man with a large pack on his back got so entangled on the rocks he could move neither forward nor backward. I crawled out to the edge and saved his life by dropping his load over the precipice into the river. This carrying place, two miles long, shattered our shoes so that our feet were covered with blisters. A pair of shoes” (moccasins) “does not last a day.”