But the sturdy Scotchmen gripped their oars and set their teeth, turning, doubling, twisting, shooting past rocky points that menaced death, portaging, lifting canoes by sheer grit and resolution up almost impassable rockways, over cliffs almost without a foothold and down into the wave again. So ran the Northwesters down the wild river to the sea, and camped near the present site of New Westminster. And lo! it was not the Columbia.
Back came Simon Fraser to Fort William on Lake Superior to report what he had done, and they crowned his brow with the name of his own great river, the Fraser.
Travellers look down the frowning Fraser gorge to-day, and little realise why Simon Fraser made that daring journey.
XXI
"A SHIP! A SHIP!"
While Lewis and Clark were making preparations to leave Fort Clatsop, all unknown to them a ship was trying to cross the bar into the Columbia River. And what a tale had she to tell,—of hunger, misery, despair, and death at Sitka.
Since 1787 the Boston ships had been trading along these shores. In that year 1792, when Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River, there were already twenty-one American ships in the Pacific northwest.
In May, 1799, the Boston brig Caroline, Captain Cleveland, was buying furs in Sitka Sound, when coasting along over from the north came the greatest of all the Russians, Alexander von Baranof, with two ships and a fleet of bidarkas.
"What now will you have?" demanded the Sitka chief, as the expedition entered the basin of Sitka Sound.
"A place to build a fort and establish a settlement for trade," answered Baranof.
"A Boston ship is anchored below and buying many skins," answered the chief. But presents were distributed, a trade was made, and Russian axes began felling the virgin forest on the sides of Verstova.