192 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



branch of the Athabaska, similarly rises in the Athabaska pass, and donw 

 the western slope a small stream leads to the Columbia; a tributary of 

 the North Saskatchewan rises in Howse pass, almost within a stone's 

 throw of the source of the Blaeberry branch of the Columbia; similarly 

 the Kicking Horse pass, Simpson pass, White Man's pass, Kananaskis 

 pass, the North Fork, the Crows Nest, and the North and South 

 Kootenay passes, are all approached by one or other of the numerous 

 tributaries of the South Saskatchewan, and in every case on the other 

 side of the summit a branch of either the Columbia or the Kootenay 

 is ready to convey the traveller, or at least to lead him, to the main 

 streams in the valleys below." 1 



Alexander Mackenzie discovered the upper waters of the Fraser 

 river, in his expedition of 1793, but thought it was the Columbia. 

 Simon Fraser, in one of the most daring journeys in the history of 

 exploration, followed the same turbulent river to the sea in 1807, 

 and only realized when he reached its mouth that it was not the 

 Columbia. David Thompson, in 1807-1811, explored every foot of 

 the real Columbia, and its great tributary the Kootenay, from source 

 to mouth By the year 1811, therefore, these pioneers of the fur 

 trade had opened new thoroughfares from the passes of the Rocky 

 mountains to the sea, and in the decades that followed brigades 

 of canoes, with their valuable cargoes of skins, set forth periodically 

 from Fort Simpson, near the mouth of the Columbia, to cross the 

 continent to York Factory on Hudson bay, or Montreal on the far-off 

 St. Lawrence. 



Between the years 1834 and 1850, John McLeod, of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company, and Robert Campbell and J. Bell of the same company, 

 had opened new highways of the fur trade in the far north-west, 

 by their explorations of the Liard, Dease and Stikine rivers, and the 

 Pelly, Yukon and Porcupine. By the middle of the nineteenth 

 century, therefore, no quarter of the northern half of the continent 

 remained inaccessible to the adventurous fur-traders who still held 

 undisputed sway over the greater portion of this immense territory; 

 a sovereignty made possible by reason of the extraordinary network 

 of waterways intersecting the land in every direction — the highways 

 and byways of the fur trade. 



1 Search for the Western Sea, xliv-xlv. 



