CHAPTER IV 



THE ANCIENT HUDSON S BAY COMPANY WAKENS UP 



THOSE eighty f Astorians and Nor Westers who 

 set inland with their ten canoes and boats under pro 

 tection of two swivels encountered as many dangers on 

 the long trip across the continent as they had left at 

 Fort George. 



Following the wandering course of the Columbia, 

 the traders soon passed the international boundary 

 northward into the Arrow Lakes with their towering 

 sky-line of rampart walls, on to the great bend of the 

 Columbia where the river becomes a tumultuous tor 

 rent milky with glacial sediment, now raving through 

 a narrow canon, now teased into a white whirlpool by 

 obstructing rocks, now tumbling through vast shadowy 

 forests, now foaming round the green icy masses of 

 some great glacier, and always mountain-girt by the 

 tent-like peaks of the eternal snows. 



&quot;A plain, unvarnished tale, my dear Belief euille&quot; 

 wrote the mighty MacDonald of Garth in his eighty- 

 sixth year for a son; but the old trader s tale needed 

 no varnish of rhetoric. &quot; Near ing the mountains we 

 got scarce of provisions; . . . bought horses for beef. 

 . . . Here (at the Great Bend) we left canoes and be- 



* Some say seventy-four. 

 28 



