EXPEDITIONS TO PACIFIC. Ill 



Mr. Frauchère left Fort Greorge, as Fort Astoria was then called, ou April 4th, 1814, 

 iu company with some of his companions who had doubled Cape Horn three years 

 earlier, and who were deprived of employment by the tnrn of afiairs on the Columbia. 

 They embarked as passengers with a North-West Company brigade consisting of ten 

 canoes — each with a crew of seven men, in all ninety persons, some of whom were going 

 to posts iu the interior. They were all well armed iu order to protect themselves against 

 hostile tribes aloug the river. They ascended the Columbia to the Great Bend, which 

 they reached oh May 4th. On Canoe River, they noticed the spot where David 

 Thompson aud his party had wintered in 1810-11. Tracing their way across the Rocky 

 Mountains, they reached the upper waters of Athabasca River, w^hich they followed to 

 Little Slave Lake. Their route from this point carried them to Fort Cumberland, Lake 

 Winnipeg and Fort William, where they arrived on July 14th ; Mr. Frauchère reached his 

 home in Montreal on September 1st. 



(6) Traveh of Mr. Ross Cox, 1812—181'?. 



A second ship, the " Beaver," sent from New York by the Pacific Fur Company, 

 arrived at the mouth of the Columbia on May 9th, 1812. Among the passengers was 

 Mr. Ross Cox, who, having obtained a clerkship in the service of the company, had 

 proceeded to Astoria, to assume his duties. In 1831 Mr. Cox published a narrative of his 

 adventures on the Pacific coast, and described his journey overland, to Montreal. In these 

 volumes he refers to the arrival on July 15th, 1811, of Mr. David Thompson, astronomer 

 to the North- West Company, in a canoe with nine men. Mr. Thompson had descended 

 the Columbia on an expedition of discovery, preparatory to his company's forming a 

 settlement on that river. Mr. Cox, during the summer of 1812, left for the interior 

 to trade with the Spokane tribe of Indians. The following year, on June 11th, he re- 

 turned to Astoria, to find a total revolution. The Pacific Fur Company had met 

 with a series of misfortunes. Mr. John George McTavish and Joseph La Rocque, with 

 sixteen men of the North- West Company had arrived and had entered into an agreement 

 to purchase all the effects of the Pacific Fur Company at a valuation, and to give such of 

 the company's servants as desired to return, a free passage home, by Cape Horn or over- 

 land. Mr. Cox was one of those who joined the new administration. He left Astoria 

 October 28th to spend the winter in trading with the Flathead ludiaus in the interior. 

 The following year he returned to headquarters then named Fort George, where he 

 passed two months. He left for Spokane House on Av;gust 5th. Between 1815 and 1817 

 he v/as in charge of Fort Okanagan, and in the spring of the latter year he was again at 

 Fort George. 



Mr. Cox took his departure from Fort George on April Kith, 1817, with a party con- 

 sisting of eighty-six souls, which embarked in two barges and nine canoes. The brigade 

 ascended the Columbia to Canoe River ; the party thence crossed the mountains, and 

 by the usual roirte reached Lesser Slave Lake, He à la Crosse and finallj'- Cumberland 

 House. They descended the Saskatchewan, passed through Lake Winnipeg, Lake of the 

 Woods, and Rainy Lake, arriviug at Fort William on August 16th. At that date 

 Captain Miles Macdonnell, formerly of the Queen's Rangers, then connected with the 

 expedition of Lord Selkirk, and others were at the fort. There was here encamped a 



