At the beginning of the nineteenth century he had entered into arrangements with an Anglo-Canadian Company (the Mackinaw), which worked the southernmost part of Canada, to fuse its enterprise with his, and thus founded the South-west Company, the name of which (at any rate in current speech) was afterwards changed into the Pacific Fur-trading Company. After attempting in vain to come to a working arrangement with the great North-west Company, he decided to act quite independently and to establish the headquarters of his new concern at the mouth of the Columbia River. Accordingly, the expedition was sent out in duplicate to the mouth of the Columbia River, one-half going a six-months' voyage round Cape Horn in a sailing ship, the Tonquin, and the other marching overland or canoeing on lakes and rivers in eighteen months from Montreal via the Mississippi and Missouri. These two parties together founded "Astoria", at the mouth of the Columbia. But most of Astor's employees were British subjects derived from men of the North-west and Mackinaw Companies; and when, in 1812, war broke out between the United States and Great Britain, a British war vessel came up the Pacific coast to Astoria and promptly turned it into "Fort George". Forthwith the North-west Company bought up the derelict property of Mr. Astor's Company from his not very honest British employees, and the few Americans in the concern retreated inland, and, after almost incredible sufferings from the attacks of unfriendly Indians, succeeded in reaching the Mississippi.
THE KOOTENAY OR HEAD STREAM OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER
This Columbia River had in reality been discovered at its sources, and traced down to the sea, between 1807 and 1811 by DAVID THOMPSON (once a Blue-coat boy in London; from 1784 to 1792 in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, and after that one of the most famous of the Nor'-westers). The upper course of this river and its northern affluents were annexed as British by David Thompson; the lower course did not at once become the political property of the United States, but was considered vaguely to be the joint property of both nations, till the Oregon settlement of 1846. By the treaty of 1792, the southern boundary of central Canada was agreed upon as being the 49th degree of north latitude, but only between the Lake of the Woods and the Rocky Mountains. The agreement of 1846 continued the 49th degree boundary to the shore of the Pacific opposite Vancouver Island.
Prominent among the agents of the North-western Company who followed Sir Alexander Mackenzie as a pioneer towards the Pacific shores was ALEXANDER HENRY THE YOUNGER,[1] regarding whose journeys some extracts may be given.
The first entry in his diary of 1799 is not particularly romantic, but shows some of the unexpected dangers attending the life of an adventurer in the far north-west. He had been riding through the Assiniboin country in the autumn of 1799, probably after one of the very indigestible meals which he describes here and there in his pages. Alone, and crossing an open plain swarming with wolves, he was seized suddenly with a violent colic, the pain of which was so terrible that he could not remain in the saddle. He dismounted, hobbled his horse, and threw himself on the grass, where he lay in agony for two hours, expecting every moment would be his last, till, quite exhausted, he fell asleep. He was awakened, however, by the howling of the wolves advancing to tear him to pieces; yet he was so weak that he was scarcely able to mount his horse, and then could only proceed at a slow walk, with the wolves snapping at his horse's heels.
Near the site of the present city of Winnipeg, in the late summer of 1800, he and his expedition were much troubled by swarms of water snakes. They were harmless but not pleasant in their familiarity, for they entered the tents and took refuge in the explorers' beds; and as they apparently came from their breeding places in Amerindian graves which covered the remains of people who had died of smallpox in a recent epidemic, they were additionally loathsome.
Smallpox indeed played a very important part in the historical development of western North America. Prior to 1780 the Amerindian tribes between the upper Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and between the Saskatchewans and the Missouri, were numerous and warlike. At first, about 1765, they received in very friendly fashion the pioneer British traders and French Canadians who attempted to resume the fur trade where it had been dropped by the French monopolists in 1760. But fifteen years afterwards, enraged at the violence and wrongdoing of the British and Canadian traders, and maddened by strong drink, they were planning a universal massacre of the whites, when suddenly smallpox (introduced by the Spaniards into New Mexico) came on them as a scourge, which destroyed whole tribes, and depopulated much of western North America.
Alexander Henry had many adventures with the bison of the plains. Here is one of them.