all the property of the company at the Rocky Mountain House, writing letters to his friends, turning over the command of the fort to McGillivray, and making a start on his new venture into the Great Western Wilderness. And although Fraser was far better equipped for the expedition than had Mackenzie been, and although he had all the benefits of the discoveries, landmarks and reports of both Mackenzie and Finlay who had preceded him, he was forty days on the route from the Rocky Mountain House to the summit of the Rocky mountainsa distance of about one hundred and fifty miles. During this trip Fraser's journal shows that he put in much of his time in abusing Alexander Mackenzie for alleged misrepresentation of the route. After reaching navigable water on the west side of the summit, and repairing their canoes, Fraser and his men commenced the laborious and perilous descent of the rapid stream forming the head of Fraser river on July 2, 1806. These dates are given here for the purpose of showing their relation to the British claim of title to the Oregon country. Both Mackenzie and Fraser believed at the dates of their explorations of the headwaters of the Fraser river that they were in fact on the headwaters of the Columbia river. If such had been the case, then the British government would have had a better claim to all the country drained by the Columbia river than they were ever able to show. Neither Mackenzie nor Fraser ever reached the watershed of the Columbia before Lewis and Clark; nor did Fraser reach the watershed of the Fraser river before Lewis and Clark reached the headwaters of the Columbia. On the 18th of August, 1805, Capt. Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, reached the headwaters of the Columbia river in what is now the state of Idaho. But putting the most favorable interpretation on the journals of Fraser and his aid, Stuart, Fraser did not cross the Rocky mountains into the New Caledonia country until the first of October, 1805. Returning now to Fraser's second expedition across the Rocky mountains we find him in August, 1806, establishing a trading post on Fraser lake in a commanding position, which in time came to be called Fort Fraser. And in addition to this post Fraser commenced the erection of another fort at the confluence of the Stuart and Fraser rivers, which he named Fort George in honor of the King, and which has remained an important trading post to this day. Fraser did not return back over the mountains to the headquarters of the fur company at the end of 1806, as might be supposed; but he remained in New Caledonia, not a large district, during the winter of 1806-7, and continued his work for the company in gathering furs and in completing the building of the forts. And by the spring of 1807 the British government had learned of the successful expedition of Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Columbia river as a military expedition, and its safe return to the United States. This aroused the British lion to action, and orders were dispatched to Canada to have Simon Fraser complete the exploration of the Fraser (as they supposed the Columbia) from Fort George to the Pacific ocean. For if Mackenzie or Fraser, either, were upon the headwaters of the Columbia river prior to Lewis and Clark, England intended to claim the whole entire Columbia river valley from the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean as British territory by right of both discovery and settlement. Accordingly orders were dispatched to Fraser in the autumn of 1807, two years after he had crossed the Rocky mountains, to make all due preparation for an early start in 1808, and explore the Fraser (their supposed Columbia) from Fort George to its mouth at the ocean. Fraser made preparations in pursuance of his orders, and about the last days of May or the first days of June, 1808, set adrift in his canoes on the boisterous river with twenty-one men and four large canoes. Within a few hours after starting one of the canoes was wrecked and lost. Within three days from starting Fraser had reached the point where Mackenzie had abandoned the river entirely, and struck across the country on foot to reach the ocean. But Simon Fraser never wavered at any danger or difficulty. With perils, dangers and obstacles to overcome that would have paralyzed any ten thousand men standing upon a line, Fraser pursued the course of the wild river with a courage that would neither halt nor consider defeat. Time and again his men begged him to alter his course and leave the river, and the Indians repeatedly warned him that it was impossible to follow the river to the great sea. But the hero of the expedition was inexorable; he followed the river along its banks; he borrowed canoes from the Indians and took to the river where it was possible; he packed his goods and baggage around rapids, waterfalls and impassable canyons; he hired horses and rode along the side of the seething waters; and he followed the river until its troubled waters was lost in the boundless ocean by many mouths a few miles above where the British Columbia city of Vancouver now stands. Simon Fraser earned the honor of naming the second largest river emptying into the Pacific ocean, and he proved to the British government that his river was not the Columbia river. Without any apparent reason or excuse the authors of Bancroft's history of the Northwest has condemned Simon Fraser as "an illiterate, ill-bred, bickering, fault-finding man, of jealous disposition, ambitious, energetic, with considerable conscience, and in the main holding to honest intentions." However, these literary carpet knights of San Francisco are to be both pitied and excused for their judgments of men and things. Never having seen anything worse than the lions on Seal Rock at their Golden Gate, or charged down upon a greater danger than a schooner of beer in the haunts of the Press Club, they knew nothing of the perils, dangers and courage of the heroic men and women who rescued the great Northwest from the barbarism and savagery of the wilderness, and set up therein great states with all the glories of attendant civilization. As has been stated, Simon Fraser's father, also named Simon Fraser, was a Tory in the American Revolutionary war; joined the British army to fight the American rebels, was captured by the Americans, and died in prison. Young Fraser was taken by his mother to Montreal, Canada, and educated. At the age of sixteen he joined the Northwest Company as a hired man. His energy, industry and talents were soon noticed and appreciated, and his rise in the service of the company was rapid. He lived to the age of eighty-six years and died at St. Andrews, in Ontario Province, Canada. ANDREW HENRY-1808 The next man to make a plunge into the great western wilderness was Andrew Henry, who was born in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, came west to St. Louis in 1807, went into the employ of Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard, who was en gaged in fur trading to the Rocky mountains under the name of the Missouri Fur Company. Henry took charge of the trapping expedition of his company to the Rocky mountains in 1808, and confined his operations to the upper Missouri and Yellowstone rivers; but being attacked and harassed by the Blackfeet Indians, he passed over the Rocky mountains in the spring of 1809, and built a cabin on the far-east branch of Snake river, which ever since has been known as Fort Henry on Henry's river. This cabin was the first structure in the shape of a house erected by white men in the great Columbia river valley. Henry did not cross the mountains for the sole reason of getting away from the Blackfeet. His original orders were to continue his explorations westward, and see what he could do in the fur trade west of the Rocky mountains. Not succeeding in doing any business, Fort Henry was abandoned in 1810, and when the Wilson Price Hunt party came along in 1811 and sought to rest and recruit at the Henry cabin they found it abandoned and of no aid to them. The next we hear of Henry is as Alexander Henry in company with Alexander Stuart (whom we left last with Simon Fraser at the Rocky Mountain House in 1807) now coming down the Columbia river to Astoria with two big canoes and sixteen voyageurs in the employ of the Northwest Company, on the 15th of November, 1813. Henry had left the service of the Americans some time between 1810 and gone over to the British. By the time Henry and Stuart reached Astoria the Northwest Company had concentrated a force of seventyfive men at that point in addition to the sixteen in the Henry and Stuart flotilla. The Northwest Company were then hotly and corruptly pressing their scheme of buying out for a song all the property of Astor, while Hunt was absent, and would very probably not have hesitated to have boldly robbed Astor if his Canadian partners had not betrayed and sold him out. The next we hear of Henry is at a post up on the Willamette river-Franchere thought in his book somewhere near the present site of Corvallis—and to this post the remnant of the Astor party went to spend the winter of 1814, probably because Henry was an American. At all events, they lived on the fat of the land, fish, deer and elk being too numerous to mention, and captured without trouble. And so ends the Henry expedition to Old Oregon. EXPEDITION OF JONATHAN WINSHIP-1809 The next year after Lisa's Henry venture, Captain Jonathan Winship. of Brighton, Massachusetts, organized a trading expedition to the Columbia river by the way of Cape Horn, and two ships were secured, one of which, the O'Cain, was commanded by himself and the other, the Albatross, was commanded by his brother, Nathan Winship. They sailed from Boston July 6, 1809, and the Albatross reached the mouth of the Columbia river May 25, 1810, being over ten months on the way. The ship was provided with a with a complete outfit, and to her original company of twenty-five white men were added twenty-five Kanakas, picked up at the islands, and being the first of those islanders imported into the United States. For want of charts, which did not exist on the Columbia one hundred years ago, and from ignorance of the channel, and the stiff current of the spring floods, the passage up the Columbia was beset with much trouble and delay. But after ten days' cruising around on the |