[burpeeI HIGHWAYS OF THE FUR TRADE 191 



having solved at last the problem that foi a couple of centuries had 

 baffled French explorers, an overland route to the Western sea. 1 



The fur-traders of the rival companies, the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany and the North West Company, now had available water toutes 

 from Hudson bay on the one side and Montreal on the other, to Lake 

 Winnipeg, and by way of the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan to the 

 heart of the great plains; by Frog and Methye portages to Lake 

 Athabaska, the Peace River country, Great Slave lake, and the 

 valley of the Mackenzie; and by the Peace River pass over the moun- 

 tains to that new empire of the far west soon to be known as New 

 Caledonia. 



Following Mackenzie's expedition through the Peace River pass 

 in 1793, and stimulated by his example, other adventurous spirits 

 of the North West Company discovered and named various passes, 

 through the Rocky mountains south of the Peace. In 1800 Duncan 

 McGillivray ascended the North Saskatchewan to a pass which he 

 named after Jasper Howse, of the same company. In 1811 David 

 Thompson ascended the Athabaska, and its tributary the Whirlpool, 

 to the height of land, and discovered Athabaska pass — for many 

 years afterward the principal thoroughfare east and west through 

 the mountains. Yellowhead, or Tête Jaune, pass, seems to have 

 been discovered about the same time. The Simpson and Kicking 

 Horse passes were discovered many years later, the first by Sir George 

 Simpson, and the latter by Dr. James Hector of the Palliser expedition. 



It is a fact not without interest in the present rapid survey 

 of water thoroughfares, that these and other passes through the Rocky 

 mountains form the gateways leading to and from the river systems 

 on either side the continental divide. As the writer has had occasion 

 to say elsewhere: 



"To reach any of the rivers that drain the Pacific slope it is 

 necessary to cross one or other of the Rocky Mountain passes. Here 

 the rivers of the plains were still the friends of explorers, as they had 

 been in the easy access they afforded from one to another. Their 

 guiding fingers pointed the way, and their waters offered a certain, 

 if not always easy, pathway to the eastern entrance of every pass 

 through the mountains. The Peace river leads not only up to, 

 but through the Peace River pass; Pine river, a branch of the Peace, 

 offers a passage-way through the pass of the same name, and connects 

 with the Missinchinka, a small tributary of the Parsnip; the Miette, a 

 mountain affluent of the Athabaska, rises near the summit of Yellow- 

 head pass, close to the headwaters of the Fraser ; Whirlpool river, another 



1 Voyages from Montreal through the Continent of North America to the 

 Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in 1789 and 1793. 



