52 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



to the Pacific Ocean "shall be free and open to the Hudson's Bay 

 Company and to all British subjects trading with the same" and that 

 in the exercise of that right they should "be treated on the same 

 footing as citizens of the United States." ^^ 



Before the treaty was negotiated Alexander Caulfield Anderson, 

 then stationed at Fort Alexandria in New Caledonia, realized, as did 

 many others, that the boundary line would probably be drawn along 

 the 49th parallel. "I judged it prudent, therefore," he writes in his 

 manuscript History of the Northwest Coast, "to endeavour to provide 

 beforehand some route of access to the sea which might supplement, 

 and perhaps eventually supersede, our usual route of communication, 

 via the Columbia River, with the depot at Fort Vancouver. I 

 accordingly wrote to the Governor (Sir George Simpson) in Council 

 at Norway House, near Winnipeg, and requested to be allowed, for 

 the reasons stated, to explore a route to Fort Langley on the lower 

 Fraser through a tract of country at that time practically unknown." 



Mr. Anderson's proposal was accepted by the Governor. It does 

 not appear to have been submitted to Council, for Peter Skene Ogden, 

 writing from Colvile on 22nd October, 1845, to Messrs. Tod and 

 Manson, says: "Shortly prior to my departure from Red River^^ 

 Sir George Simpson suggested to me that it would be most highly 

 important to ascertain if a communication with horses could be 

 effected between Alexandria and Langley and as Mr. A. C. Anderson 

 has volunteered his services and from his active habits and experience 

 in Caledonia I consider him fully competent to carry it into effect, 

 I have to request that he may be appointed." ^^ While not limiting 

 Anderson's freedom of action, Ogden suggested that the westward 

 journey should be by way of the chain of lakes from Lillooet to 

 Harrison River, and the return by the canyons of the Fraser River. 

 The letter shows that the Hudson's Bay Company had even then a 

 good knowledge of that part of the province. How this was obtained 

 it is difficult to say; for from the time of Fraser's voyage in 1808 

 we have no record of another visit to that vicinity except the express 

 canoe journey of Governor Simpson in 1828; and. neither of these 

 travellers left the river or stayed to examine the country. The 

 information may have been obtained from the natives; though in 

 that case it is unu sually correct. 



^^Treaty of Washington, June 15, 1846, article II. 



I'Ogden had just returned from England. He was accompanied by Messrs. 

 Warre and Vavasour. Father De Smet, in a letter dated 17th August, 1845, de- 

 scribes his meeting with the party on the Kootenay River; see Missions de I'Oregon, 

 Gand, 1848, pp. 72-3. 



^'Letter preserved in the Archives of British Columbia. 



