Fort Langley

DAVID THOMPSON was born in the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Westminster, England, on April 30, 1770, and was baptized on May 20 of the same year. The parish register gives the names of his parents as "David Thompson and Ann his wife," though it gives no information as to their antecedents or the time or place of their marriage. On subsequent pages of the register, however, it is recorded that another son, named John, was born to David Thompson and Ann his wife on January 25, 1772, and was baptized on February 16 of the same year. The next and last record that has been discovered about the family is of the death of David Thompson, doubtless the father, on February 28, 1772. Opposite his name no burial fee is entered, a fact which shows that he was buried at the expense of the parish. Mrs. Shaw, one of Thompson's daughters, informed the writer that her father's brother John, who was a sea captain, had once visited her father in Montreal. She also said that her grandparents came from Wales, and that their family name was originally Ap-Thomas, but that it had been changed to Thompson on going to London. In this connection, it is interesting to notice that late in life the speech of David Thompson the younger was remarked by an observer to betray his Welsh origin.₁
On April 29, 1777, when just seven years of age, David Thompson entered the Grey Coat School, Westminster. This interesting old school1 is now, and has been since its re­organisation by the Endowed Schools Commission in 1873, a charity school for girls. It may still be seen by the visitor, some five minutes' walk from Westminster Abbey: an old red house, built in the Elizabethan manner, covered at the back with grapevine and Virginia creeper, and surrounded by a large garden and playground. But in 1777 it was a school devoted to the education of poor boys: its" principall designe" was " to educate poor children in the principles of piety and virtue, and thereby lay a foundation for a sober and Christian life." The early training which David Thompson received within the walls of this school coloured his whole career, and marked him off in later life from the dissolute traders and voyageurs among whom his lot was cast.
Some years ago the opportunity of visiting this school presented itself, and Miss Day, the head mistress, kindly allowed me the privilege of inspecting the old minute-book of the meetings of the Board of Governors of the school, in which are to be found the following entries relating to David Thompson. Under the date of Tuesday, April 29, 1777, his admission to the school is recorded:
"Abram Acworth, Esq. was this day pleased to present David Thompson to be admitted into this Hosp l on ye Foundation and ye Governors present being satisfy with ye said child's settlement. Ordd that he be admitted on bringing in the usual necessaries."
Over six years later, at a quarterly meeting of the Board held on Tuesday, December 30, 1783, the name of David Thompson reappears in the minutes:
"The Master also reports that application was made by the Secre­tary belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, to know, if this Charity could furnish them with 4 boys against the month of May next, for their settlements in America. The Master, by order of the Treasurer wrote a letter informing the Governor and Directors that there were but two boys that had been taught navigation in the school, which two boys they desire may be qualified for them, viz: Samuel John McPherson and David Thompson."
Samuel John McPherson was evidently averse to being sent away to America, for he "elopd from this Hospital on the 7th JanY" following, and as he did not return he was ex­pelled; but David Thompson accepted the fate for which the Governors of the school had destined him. In the minutes of the quarterly meeting of the Board of Governors of the school, held on Tuesday, June 29, 1784, his apprentice. ship to the Hudson's Bay Company is recorded:

" David Thompson bound to the Secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company for seven years & paid.

On the 20th May ,David Thompson a mathematical Boy belonging to the Hospl was bound to the Hudson's Bay Company & the Trear then paid Mr Thos. Hutchins, Corresponding Secretary to the said Company, the sum of five pounds for taking the said Boy apprence for seven years.

" David Thompson was thus a pupil in the Grey Coat School for seven years (1777-84). During this time his mathematical master was one Thomas Adams, of whom nothing further is known, and the sort of teaching which the poor child received may be judged from the following list of books, many of them then nearly a hundred years old, from which he was taught:

Wallis, Mechanics
Wallis, A Treatise of Algebra
Thesaurus Geogrophicus
Leybourn, Dialling.
Leybourn, Mathematical Institutions
Gordon, Geography Anatomized.
Atkinson, Epitome of the Art of Navigation.

Newton, An Idea of Geography
Barlow, A Survey of the Tide
.published 1655 1685 1695 1682 1704­ 1716 1711 1708 1717

From such books as these, David Thompson received the preparation for his life-work in surveying the northern forests and plains of America.
David Thompson sailed from London in May, 1784, in the Hudson's Bay Company's ship Prince Rupert, and arrived at Churchill in the beginning of September. Here he took up his quarters in the new trading establishment that had just been built on the site which is still occupied by the trading store of the Hudson's Bay Company; for Fort Prince of Wales, the great stone fort five miles away at the mouth of the river, had been taken and burned by the French two years before. He spent the winter of 1784-85 under Samuel Hearne, the traveller who, fifteen years before, had started from Churchill on foot with a few Indians to discover and explore a "mine" of copper near the Coppermine river, and incidentally to set at rest the question of the existence or non-existence of a practicable passage for ships around the north coast of America from Europe to Asia. Although he does not appear to have been imbued with any admiration for Hearne's character-for Thompson was a very devout man, and Hearne an unbeliever-the intimate knowledge gained of Hearne's journeyings must have been more or less of an inspiration to him throughout his after life.
After the arrival of the annual ship at Churchill in 1785, Thompson was sent to York Factory, the journey being accomplished on foot, along with two Indians, on the low shore of Hudson Bay. This was his first experience of travel in the North- West, and evidently the memory of it remained clear and distinct in his mind. A growing boy, fifteen years old, set down on the inhospitable shore of Hudson Bay in the autumn of the year, without provisions, and with instruc­tions to walk to another fur-trading station a hundred and fifty miles away, was not likely to forget the journey.
York Factory, like Fort Prince of Wales, had been taken and burned by the French in 1782, and as, unlike Fort Prince of Wales, it was built entirely of wood, the burning had com­pletely destroyed it.. When the fort was destroyed, Humphrey Marten, the officer in charge for the Hudson's Bay Company, had been carried away prisoner by the French, but in the following Year, that is in 1783, he had returned and rebuilt a trading house on the site of the one that had been burned, half a mile below the position on which York Factory stands to-day. By this time Marten had been in charge of York Factory, or some other trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company, for twenty-four years, and had become so rough and overbearing that life under him must have been anything out agreeable. Edward Umfreville, who spent seven years as a clerk under him before the destruction of York Factory, says that he used to beat the Indians most cruelly, and thus drive them away burning with revenge. He was respected neither by the Indians, nor "by those who were so unfortu­nate as to serve under him. His disposition was vindictive and unsociable to the last degree. English, as well as Indians, felt the weight of his oppressive temper, which diffused its corroding effect to every object. Domestic happiness was a stranger to his table, and his messmates lived a most unhappy life, under the rod of this unrelenting taskmaster." Thompson arrived at York about September 13, and the two Indians were rewarded for the care that they had taken of him on the journey by a present of three gallons of brandy and four pounds of tobacco. He now settled down at York for a year, his principal companions, besides Marten, being Joseph Colen, John Ballenden, Alfred Robinson, and John Jennings. The accounts for the year are in his neat hand­writing. Besides doing clerical work, he assisted in the trading store, and at the same time was an indefatigable hunter, and thus materially assisted in supplying his companions with geese, ducks, and such other game as abounded in the vicinity.
As shown in the Servants' Accounts, his purchases from the Company for the year amounted to £6, 12S. 9d., but in contrast with most of the other accounts, none of this was for brandy.
The year 1786 was a time of commotion among the em­ployees of the Hudson's Bay Company on the shore of the Bay. Humphrey Marten had been recalled to England, and Joseph Colen was appointed as Resident Chief at York in his place. William Tomison, a Scotchman from Ronaldshay, had been “Chief Inland " for some years, and had resigned, but on Colen's accession to command at York had withdrawn hi. resignation and had decided to go back to the Saskatchewan, with Robert Longmore¹ as principal lieutenant. Malcolm Ross, who was afterwards closely associated with Thompson, was being sent up the Churchill river from Churchill to endeavour to open up a direct route from that post to Cumber­ land House on the Saskatchewan river. At the same time more trading posts were being established on the Saskatchewan river by the brigades from York itself, in order to compete with the Canadian traders. The establishment of these posts had been delayed first by the epidemic of smallpox in 1781, and then by the destruction of Forts York and Churchill (or Prince of Wales) in 1782.
On July 21, 1786, after having remained a year at York, Thompson was fitted out with a trunk, a handkerchief, shoes, shirts, a gun, powder, and a tin pot or cup, and the next day he, with forty-six other "Englishmen" in charge of Robert Longmore, started inland up the Hayes river to establish more trading posts on the Saskatchewan river, above Hudson's House, which appears to have been the most remote post of the Hudson's Bay Company occupied at that time. Tomison remained behind at York Factory till August 30, when, with two young men, Hugh FoIster and Magnus Tate, and one Indian, he followed the brigade with its loaded canoes to the Saskatchewan. The party ascended the North Saskatchewan river to a point on its northern bank, forty-two miles above Battleford and twelve miles north of the present station of Birling on the Canadian Northern Railway, where they cleared the ground and built a trading post composed of one or more log houses, probably surrounded by a wooden stockade. When completed, they dignified this collection of huts with the name of Manchester House.

¹ Robert Longmore was a trader in the employ of the Hudson's Bay
Company for many ycars. He was in charge of the brigade of Canoes with which Thompson first went inland in 1186, and afterwards in 1799 was Master at Swan River, with a salary of £70 a year. Samuel Hearne wrote of him in 1786, "He possesses a very essential qualification, which is, that of being univenally beloved by the natives. To add to this, his long residence in those parts [the Saskatchewan country], together with an invariable attention to the Company's interests, must long since have made him a competent judge of their affairs in that quarter."

Edward Umfreville, who had once been employed by the Hudson's Bay Company as a clerk or writer at York Factory, but who was now in the employ of the North-West Company, had been occupying a similar trading store for the past three years at a point forty miles farther up the river, but as far as we know there were no white men beyond him, and it was not until three years later that Peter Pangman, one of the partners of the North-West Company, ascended the Saskat­chewan as far as Rocky Mountain House, so that young Thompson had now reached almost to the very limit of the country with which civilised men were familiar on the Saskatchewan at that time. Far to the north and north. west there were a couple of trading posts on the Churchill and Athabaska rivers in charge of such men as Alexander Mackenzie and Peter Pond, but to the south and west was a great unknown wilderness inhabited only by the native Indians.
It was a time of strenuous opposition in the fur trade between the English traders from Hudson Bay and the Scotch traders with French employees from Montreal, and some of these latter evidently came and settled near Manchester House, for Thompson makes incidental mention in his journal of these traders who were opposed to his employers. The Company was working hard to secure furs wherever they might be found, and the Blackfeet and Piegan Indians who roamed over the plains to the south brought quite a few wolf skins to the traders, and with care it was hoped they might be taught to catch beaver and some of the 'other more valuable fur-bearing animals. It was therefore necessary to send some one out among these Indians to gain their friend­ship and to secure their trade, and Thompson and six others were chosen for the enterprise. The party travelled south­westward to the Bow river, probably to somewhere in the vicinity of the present city of Calgary, where there was a large camp of Piegan. Here, after sending some of his men back to Manchester House, he settled down for the greater part of the winter in the tent of an old Chief named Sauka­mappee, and the friendship of this chief, though it did not always prevent trouble, stood him in good stead many times in his after life. Some of the stories and traditions of the Indians which he obtained at the time form an interesting part of the present book.
This was Thompson's first introduction to the great plains, and as he went to them so young, being then only seventeen years old, he evidently got a thorough, sympathetic conception of the natural untainted life and habits of the western Indians who wandered over them.
Some time during the following winter or spring he returned to the trading post on the Saskatchewan river, and later he descended the river for about one hundred and twenty five miles to an older trading post called Hudson's House, which had been built by Tomison some years before. This post was situated a short distance above the present city of Prince Albert, three or four miles below a place now known as 'Yellow Banks,' on the edge of a forest of spruce and pine. The Blackfoot tribes of the plains would hardly be likely to come to a place so far east and so completely surrounded by forest as this was, so that the Indians whom he would meet here would probably be Cree and Assiniboin.
The only thing we know about him during the following summer is that in some way he had the misfortune to break his right leg; and through improper setting, or for some other reason, this accident caused him considerable discom­fort for some years.
Towards the end of summer, he again continued down the river, on this occasion as far as Cumberland House on Pine Island lake, a post that had been built by Samuel Hearne, his former master at Fort Churchill, fifteen years before, with the object of intercepting the Indians who were coming down with their furs from the Athabaska and Churchill river regions, and of preventing them, if possible, from dis­posing of these furs to the Frobishers and the other traders who came west from Montreal.
He was at this time nineteen years old. It is evident that he had always been interested in surveying and in observing and recording natural phenomena, so when he had settled down for the winter he began to keep a careful meteorological journal in which were noted the readings of the thermometer three or four times a day, the direction and force of the wind, and general remarks on the climate. During this same winter he took also a series of astronomical observations, six being meridian altitudes of the sun for latitude, and thirty-five lunar distances for longitude. The results of the observations place Cumberland House in north latitude 53° 56' 44”, and west longitude 102° 13', a position almost identical with that which it occupies to-day on the latest official maps. When one considers the nautical almanacs that were available at that time, this result is quite astonishing and puts to shame much even of the good observing of the present day. At that time there were very few other points on this whole continent of America whose positions on the earth's surface were as accurately known as this remote trading post on the Saskat­chewan river
On the maps of Canada its position has been changed many times, but the latest surveys have brought it back to the place to which it was assigned by this young astronomer one hundred and twenty-five years ago.
Such was the beginning of his long career of geodetic surveying which was to make him the greatest practical land geographer that the world has produced. Very few men have had the opportunity of exploring the half of a great new continent, and no one else has ever seized the opportunity as David Thompson did. For many thousands of miles, in pursuit of my work when engaged as a geologist on the staff" of the Geological Survey of Canada between the years 1883 and 1898, it was my good fortune to travel over the same routes that he had travelled a century before, and to take observations on the sun and stars on the very spots where he had observed; and while my instruments may have been better than his, his surveys and observations were invariably found to have an accuracy that left little or nothing to be desired.1
In the following spring, after having determined by astronomical observations the position of his winter home, he started with the fur brigade for York Factory and made a survey of the Saskatchewan and Hayes rivers to that place, a distance of seven hundred and fifty miles.
Later on in the summer, he again returned to Cumber­land House, and spent the winter with Philip Tumor, a surveyor in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company. With this man as a tutor, and doubtless with the thought of some of the difficulties in the work of the previous winter in his mind, he devoted himself heart and soul to the study of practical astronomy and surveying.
In the following spring he again descended to York, while his friend and teacher, Philip Turnor, started north-westward by Frog Portage to Lake Athabaska. .
After having thus spent four years in the Saskatchewan country, he left it for a while, and remained for a year at York Factory, where his time was largely occupied in taking a long series of astronomical observations for latitude and longitude, the results of which correctly placed the position of the factory half a degree west of the location previously determined by Turnor.
During the spring of 1788, the mouth of the Hayes river, on the west bank of which York Factory was situated, became blocked with broken ice, which caused the water to rise behind it and flood the adjoining land. The water rose several feet in the dwelling-house and did a large amount of damage to the buildings and stores. In order to prevent a recurrence of such a calamity, Colen moved the fort upstream about half a mile to its present position, on a spot of higher and drier ground. The process of moving occupied several years, and was not completed until 1793, so that doubtless Thompson, among other duties, assisted in building the Factory in its present position.
South-west of York Factory, and at no great distance from
it, is the country called by Thompson the Muskrat country. It is situated on some of the western tributaries of Nelson river that flow into that stream at Split lake, and in a general way lies between the Churchill river to the north and the Saskatchewan river to the south. Curiously enough this region, though so near York Factory and so rich in fur-bearing animals, had been occupied exclusively by the traders of the North-West Company from Montreal. Even as early as 1780 Samuel Hearne wrote from Churchill with regard to these traders and others acting under instructions from Peter Pond on Athabaska river, "The Canadians have found means to intercept some of my best Northern Leaders. However, I still live in hopes of getting a few [furs] from that quarter."

1 In a letter dated 18171 Tompson states that a large ten-inch brass sextant of Dolland's, reading to the 15”, had been his constant companion for twenty-­eight years. He evidently obtained it about this time.
In 1792 Colen and his associates on the Council of the Hudson's Bay Company at York decided to make an effort to. wrest the trade of this country from the Canadians, and accordingly they sent William Cook, Malcolm Ross, and David Thompson to establish trading posts in the district. With his appointment to a fur-trading post in the Muskrat country, Thompson was thus placed in the front of the firing line in a struggle in which his adversaries were not only the Canadian traders of the North-West Company, who were the natural antagonists of the Hudson's Bay Company, but also the traders of his own Company under the jurisdiction of Churchill and not of York Factory; for Churchill and York, though both trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, sent their re­ports in to the head office at London independently, and the rivalry between them was such that it became occasionally necessary for the Board of Directors to intervene.
In order to understand the conditions by which Thompson was surrounded, it will be necessary to review briefly the con­dition of the fur trade at York and Churchill at that time. The traders from Montreal, who afterwards united into the North-West Company, travelling in canoes through lakes Superior and Winnipeg, reached the upper portion of the Churchill river in 1776, and built a house on the Athabaska river, a short distance above Lake Athabaska, in In8, from which place they extended their trading posts westward
up Peace river and northward down the Mackenzie river. Churchill and York, the trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company on Hudson Bay, immediately felt the effect of this invasion of the "Canadians," for the Indians had always brought their furs to the posts on the Bay to trade for such articles as they wanted, and now they were able to dispose of them inland. Consequently, in 1774-, the Hudson's Bay Com­pany's men went inland and built Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan river, and two years later they went farther up the same river and built Hudson's House, from which place an utpost appears to have been established still farther up the Saskatchewan at the Elbow. Here both the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Canadians appear to have lived in the winter of 1779-80; and here, in the spring of 1780, Cole, one of the Canadian traders, was killed in a quarrel with the Indians, and all the other traders, no matter what Company they were serving, were obliged to flee down the river for safety. Immediately afterwards smallpox ravaged the country, swept away great numbers of the Indians, and disheartened the survivors. after the smallpox epidemic had abated, York and Churchill Factories were destroyed by the French, and all the furs contained in them were confiscated. These disasters paralyzed the energies of the Hudson's Bay Company for a time, and it was not until 1786 that the party under William Tomison, of which Thompson was a member, ascended the Saskatchewan river past Cumberland House and built Manchester House 425 miles above it.
About the same time it had occurred to some one that it should be possible to reach the Saskatchewan river more easily from Churchill than from York by a direct route up the Churchill river, and accordingly in the same year in which Thompson left for the Saskatchewan, Malcolm Ross, who had already been at Cumberland, was sent from York on July 27, 1786, to Churchill, with instructions to go up the Churchill river to Cumberland House.
In regard to this expedition, Samuel Hearne, then in charge of Churchill, wrote to Joseph Colen at York as follows, under date of August 6, 1786 :

"Malcolm Ross's experience in the interior parts of the country will, I hope, render him perfect master of the business he is going about. Since Malcolm's arrival here five canoes of Nelson Indians came to the Factory, two of which have been prevailed upon to carry him and his companions to Cumberland House, where they will be ready to prosecute the remainder of the Company's orders in the spring."

As will be seen later, Hearne himself had no confidence in the successful issue of this expedition from a commercial point of view.
The following summer Malcolm Ross had evidently returned to York, for in a letter to Samuel Hearne, dated York Factory, July 19, 1787, Joseph Colen wrote:
"Malcolm Ross tells me he had many difficulties to encounter before he reached Cumberland House from Churchill, the water so shoal as to prevent the navigation of small canoes."
In answer Hearne wrote:
"I am sorry to hear of the difficulties Malcolm Ross had to en­counter with, tho' from my own knowledge no less could be expected; this river a little distance from here is inaccessible for anything much larger than a light canoe."
In the following year, 1788, Colen sent Robert Longmore from York to Churchill to prosecute the discoveries from Churchill inland. His party did not succeed in opening a trade route to the Saskatchewan river, but it did succeed in establishing, or arranging for the establishment of, trading posts at several places up the Churchill river.
In- 1789 the Board of Dilectors of the Hudson's Bay Company in London sent Philip Turnor from London to Lake Athabaska in order to find out its exact location, and after his return they kept instructing Colen and his associates on the Council at York: to send Ross and Thompson to that country, but Colen seems to have taken a very perfunctory interest in the enterprise, and to have been much more interested in competing with the Company's men from Churchill for the trade of' the country near the headwaters of the Burntwood and Grass rivers in what Thompson calls the Muskrat country.
In 1792 Ross and Thompson, instead of being sent to Lake Athabaska, were, as stated above, despatched up the Nelson river to winter at Sipiwesk Jake. In the following spring Thompson alone, without any assistance from York, endeavoured to explore a new route to the Athabaska country by Reindeer lake, but being unable to obtain Indian canoemen was obliged to turn back and return to York.
Later in the year 1793, he left York and, accompanied by Malcolm Ross, went up to Cumberland House on the Saskat­chewan river, and after remaining there three days continued on to Buckingham House, where he spent the winter of 1793­-94. With regard to this journey the directors in London wrote that they would expect much good to follow the expe­dition of Ross and Thompson to the Athabaska country, and also that the arrangements made by which William Cook was to return in winter from Split lake, where he was in charge, and accompany Ross and Thompson to the Athabaska country, met with their " full approbation." At the same time they wrote, expressing the hope that George Charles, who had gone up the Churchill river from Fort Churchill, would "restore a considerable part of the long lost trade to Churchill."
But William Cook remained at Split lake all winter, and while it is possible that Colen intended that Thompson should proceed from Cumberland House to Lake Athabaska instead of going to Buckingham House, there is no notice of any such intention in Thompson's journals, and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Colen was guilty of duplicity, and that while he had no interest in the exploration of the more remote interior parts of the country, he endeavoured to put the blame for his want of enterprise on other shoulders. This opinion is strengthened by a statement in a letter from the Board of Directors in London to the Council at York, dated May 30, 1795, with reference to Peter Fidler, who was Thompson's fellow surveyor in the Hudson's Bay Company, though at a much lower salary. It is as follows:
“We observe that Mr. P. Fidler has been kept at the Factory for two seasons past, but for the future we direct him to proceed inland on discoveries.”
When Thompson arrived at York Factory from the Saskat­chewan river in the summer of 1794, Colen and his associates at York wrote to England as follows:
"Notwithstanding the steps pursued last fall to ensure the success of the Athapascow Expedition, we are sorry to remark it was again set aside at Cumberland House this Spring. As these transactions happened many hundred miles distance from us, and with much secrecy, we cannot from our own knowledge inform your honours the real cause, and it is from letter and hearsay we form our judgment. It, however, appears surprising, for when Mr. Colen accompanied the men and boats up Hill River, with trading goods, many volunteers offered their service for the Athapascow Expedition, and said they were ready to have gone from Cumberland House with Messrs. :Ross and Thompson, but Mr. Tomison refusing to pass his word for the advance of wages promised by the Honourable Committee it of course stopt the Expedition in question and the considerable loss of your honours. Indeed we find this business involved in mystery, and as are many other transactions inland. ...We have already remarked on the overthrow of the Athapascow Expedition this season. The repeated disappointments so much disheartened Mr. Ross determined him to return to England had not Mr. Thompson prevailed on him to pursue some other track into the Athapascow country, for they declare it will be impossible to carry it on from Cumberland as the Honourable Company's affairs at present stand, as every obstacle is thrown in the way to prevent its success. In order to suppress similar obstructions Mr. Ross took men and one canoe cargo of goods with him from Cumberland House and built a house to the northward near to a station occupied by a Mr. Thompson, a Canadian Proprietor whose success of late years in collecting of furs has been great. Mr. David Thompson has been fitted out with men and three canoe cargoes from this place to supply Mr. Ross by pro­ceeding up Nelson River track."
It would thus appear that Ross had become thoroughly dis­gusted with the obstructions put in the way of an expedition into the Athabaska country either at York or by those in charge on the Saskatchewan river, and had decided to go to England, doubtless in order to be able to appeal directly to the Board of Directors, but that Thompson had urged him to consent to remain in the country until they had definitely found out whether the route by Reindeer lake was feasible as a trade route or not. But Ross's heart was not in this work of dis­covery, and he would furnish no assistance for the exploration of a new route when he believed that the old one followed by the North-Westers was good enough.
It is difficult to understand some of the statements made in the letter cited above. It is evident, however, that it was Colen's avowed intention that Ross and Thompson should proceed from Cumberland House to the Athabaska country by the route which had been travelled by the traders of the North-West Company for a number of years, and by Philip Tumor of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1791, but that he claimed that this had been frustrated by Tomison, the Chief at Cumberland in charge of the inland trade, or by the insub­ordination of the canoemen, and that Thompson was sent up the Saskatchewan river instead.
In their answer to this letter, written in May, 1795, the directors in London show their sympathy for David Thompson by saying, "We are perfectly satisfied with the conduct of Messrs. David Thompson, Ross, and others," and by requesting that Thompson should be advised of their approbation. They wrote also, " Obstacles are again, we perceive, thrown in the way of the Athapascow Expedition, but we trust all diffi­culties which occur and impede the Company's success will soon be removed."
That Colen believed that he had shelved the Athabaska question for a time is shown by the fact that he sent Ross, Thompson, Cook, Tate, and Sinclair back into the Muskrat country to oppose two Canadian traders named Robert Thompson and McKay who had been cutting into the York Factory trade for some years past. That winter Robert Thompson, who had been for many years on the Churchill and Nelson rivers, was killed in a quarrel with some Indians.
David Thompson spent the winter of 1794-95 at Reed lake.

And in July, 1795, paid his last visit to York Factory. He had been making surveys wherever he went, so that the amount of geographical information that he had collected was very large, but there had been no attempt on the part of the Company to help him push westward to the Athabaska country. Nevertheless Colen and his Council at York wrote to London as follows: "The steps pursued last season in the exploring a new track towards the Athabasca country we hope will meet your Honour's approbation." In return the directors demanded to see the maps of the country which had been explored.
But the end of this truculent quibbling was at hand. Ross and Thompson left York for the Nelson river on July 18, 1795, and the Council wrote to London with reference to Athabaska exploration that" Messrs. Ross and Thompson were despatched from the factory with men in four large canoes loaded with trading goods last July, and we hope to give a good account of their success next season"; but they added a sentence which shows they were thinking only of the trade in the Muskrat country itself, "Should the track up Seal River be found nearer and a better road, the whole of that track will be surrendered up to Churchill."
Ross and Thompson went directly to Fairford House and Duck Portage respectively, where they built trading stores and spent the following winter, being obliged to compete on the one hand with traders from Canada and on the other with traders in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company from Churchill.
The following summer, 1796, Ross went down to York alone, while Thompson made a final and in this case successful attempt to push north-westward through Deer and Wollaston lakes to Lake Athabaska.
But how different was the outfit and assistance supplied him from what he had a right to expect, considering the anxiety shown by the directors of the Company in the success of his expedition. Instead of a proper supply of men, canoea, and trading goods, he was obliged to engage two previously untried Indians who knew nothing of such work; no canoe was to be had, so that it was necessary for him to go into the woods, collect birch bark, and make one; all he had was a fish net and a small quantity of ammunition, except the compass and sextant, which were his own private property. So provided, he started out on a long exploring expedition into a new country. The account of this expedition is given in his own words on pages 133-53, so that we need not repeat it here.
On his return from Lake Athabaska he built a trading post on the west side of Reindeer lake, where he was later joined by Malcolm Ross, his old companion, who brought with him fresh supplies, but at the same time he brought also an order from Joseph Colen, the Resident Chief at York, instructing him to stop surveying. Such an order, which he must have felt to be contrary to the earnest wishes of the directors of the Company, after the great personal exertions and sacrifices which he had made to carry out those wishes, cut him to the heart. Nevertheless the two men settled down quietly to the routine of trade, and spent together what proved to be one of the coldest winters ever known in western Canada.
As his term of service had expired, Thompson now decided to leave the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. On Tues­day, May 23, 1797, he therefore left the little cabin on Reindeer lake which had been his home during the winter, and with it the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. "This day," runs the entry in his journal, "left the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, and entered that of the Company of the Merchants from Canada. May God Almighty prosper me."
Thompson had been with the Hudson's Bay Company for thirteen years. During these years he had travelled in all about nine thousand miles, and of this distance he had made careful surveys, checked by numerous astronomical observa­tions, of three thousand five hundred miles. He had also correctly determined by multiple observations for latitude and longitude, the positions of eight widely separated places in the interior of the continent, and of one (York Factory) on Hudson Bay, so that his surveys extended between known positions. In addition to his surveying work he had taken and recorded regular observations on the climate and general natural phenomena.
The following letter, written after he reached the trading post of the North-West Company, shows how keenly he felt the opposition which Colen had shown to his surveying work.

"MR. COLEN.
"SIR: I take this opportunity of returning you my most re­spectful thanks for your loan of two guineas to my mother. I have enclosed a bill to you for the above amount.
"My friends belonging to York inform me that you are very desirous to find out who was the author of those letters that were wrote to H. B. Co. and militated against you 1795. I will give you that satisfaction. When I came down that year the other gentlemen were waiting my arrival in order to assist them in drawing up their grievances; as you were then absent I accepted the office with some hesitation, but as the letters were to be delivered to you on you landing at York for your inspection, and that you might have time to answer them, I considered you in a manner as present.- Those letters were drawn up by me, assisted by my friend Dr. Thomas, and not one half of the evils complained of were enumerated.
"You told Mr. Ross that when in England you were endeavouring to serve those, who behind your back were trying to cut your throat ­before you went to England I had always a Letter and Books from the Co., since that neither the one nor the other, and I have been put the whole winter to the greatest inconvenience for want of a Nautical Almanac.
"Many of us acknowledge with readiness that you have some good qualities, and I had once the greatest respect for you; I have some yet, but. it is not my wish to say those things which I know you do but if the Hudson's Bay Company did not need Thomp­son's services as a surveyor, the North-West Company, which was controlled by men with much larger and more progressive ideas, was anxious to obtain some accurate knowledge of the extent and character of the country in which it was carrying on its business. When he left the little trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company on the west shore of Reindeer lake and walked down to the nearest post of the North-Westers, about seventy-five miles farther south, Thompson felt sure of a welcome from the Canadians. After staying at Fraser's House for about ten days, he proceeded to Grand Portage on Lake Superior. On the way he met some of the members of the North-West Company, among them Roderick Mackenzie, a cousin of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and the author of 'The History of the Fur Trade which forms the Introduction to Alexander Mackenzie's voyages, and Simon Fraser, who after­wards descended the Fraser river. These men were hence­forward to be his associates.
For the last three years during which Thompson had been in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company he had been receiving L60 a year, which was probably the largest salary paid to any employee of his age at the time, but it is not known on what terms he was engaged by the North-West Company. His first work, however, was to consist of one continuous surveying trip unhampered by any necessity for looking after trade returns. His instructions were (I) to determine the position of the 49th parallel of latitude, which not wish to hear. How is it, Sir, that everyone who has once wished you well should turn to be indifferent to you, and even some to hate you, altho' they are constant in their other friendships,-there must be a defect somewhere.
"The fact is, that from your peculiar manner of conduct, you are also one of those unfortunate men who will have many an acquaintance, but never never a real friend.-Your humble Servant,
" D. THOMPSON."

By the Treaty of I792, had been decided on as the boundary line between the United States and British North America; (2) to visit the villages of the Mandan Indians on the Mis­souri river; (3) to search for fossil bones of large animals; (4) to determine the positions of the trading posts of the North-West Company.
Starting from Grand Portage on Lake Superior, he turned back into the western country by the ordinary trade route down the Rainy and Winnipeg rivers and through Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis to Swan and Assiniboine rivers, and down this latter stream to the mouth of the Souris river, which he reached about the beginning of winter. From there he struck southward across the plains to the Mandan villages on the Missouri, back again to the Assiniboine, down that river, up the Red river and across the head waters of the Mississippi river to the site of the present city of Duluth, and then around the south shore to Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie and back by the north shore to Grand Portage, where he arrived early in June, having been about ten months accomplishing his journey. Since he had left Grand Portage in the previous year, he had covered a total of four thousand miles of survey through previously unsurveyed territory, a record that has rarely been equalled.
The partners of the North-West Company seem to have been very well satisfied with the work so far done by him, but he was an able and experienced fur-trader as well as a surveyor, and the North-West Company was a commercial concern and needed furs, therefore they apparently decided not to continue to employ Thompson exclusively at survey work, but to engage him at his old business of trading for furs, with the privilege of making surveys at the same time. This arrangement was satisfactory to Thompson, and about the middle of July he started west again, this time for Lake La Biche at the headwaters of one of the branches of the Athabaska river, where he spent the following winter.

In the Summer of 1799 he extended his surveys to the Athabaska river and some of its tributaries, and from Methy portage, which is on the canoe route to Lake Athabaska, he started on his way down the Churchill river to Grand Portage. At Isle a la Crosse he stopped for a few days, and on June 10 married Charlotte Small, a half-breed girl fourteen years of age. A memorandum in an old Bible belonging to Mrs. Shaw, one of his daughters, states that Charlotte Small was born at Isle a la Crosse on September 1, 1785. It is highly probable that she was a daughter of Patrick Small, who was one of the earliest traders on the Churchill river.1
After the wedding, Thompson went eastward to Grand Portage, probably taking his bride with him. To this place drawing-paper had been sent from Montreal for his maps, and with the precious paper in his possession he accompanied John McDonald of Garth, back to Fort George on the Saskatchewan, which was situated close to Buckingham House of the Hudson's Bay Company, his old home of the winter of 1793-4, where he wintered and drew his maps.'
On March 2.5 he was again on the move, for he then crossed to the south side of the Saskatchewan, and started overland for Fort Augustus, travelling along the north side of the " Chain of Lakes" north of the Vermilion river, near the north line of Township 54. On March 28 he reached Fort Augustus, and on the 31st he left it for Rocky Mountain House, which had been built the previous autumn. He travelled southward to the east of Bear's Hills, across two branches of Battle river, down the Wolf's trail, and westward across Wolf Creek (Blind Man river), to a crossing of Clearwater river, two miles above its mouth, and arrived at Rocky Mountain House on April 7, crossing the river on the ice, which was still strong.
The old house of the North-West Company was on the north bank of the Saskatchewan on a beautiful wide level flat a mile and a quarter above the mouth of the Clearwater river. After the union of the companies it continued to be occupied for many years. It was strongly fortified on account of the possible hostility of the Blackfeet who traded there, and the ruins of these old fortifications were still standing when I visited the place in 1886.

¹ "Patrick Small was a native of Glengarry, and a nephew of Major-General SmaIl of the 42nd Highlanders. In 1786-7 he was in charge of the post at Isle a la Crosse for the North-West Company. In 1790 he was one of the partners in the North.West Company, owning two shares, or a one-tenth interest in it. He was a Roman Catholic in religion, and had married a Chip­pewa woman in the west. There was also another and younger man named Patrick Small in the employ of the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies, probably a brother of Mrs. Thompson; he married a daughter of James Hughes, by whom he had nine children, and he died in 1846 at Carlton. His wife died in Manitoba, and lies buried in the St. Boniface cemetery.
I In the list of partners and employees of the North-West Company for this year, published by Masson in the " Reminiscences of Roderick Mackenzie,"
David Thompson's name appears as an employee assigned to “Upper Fort des Prairie and Rocky Mountains" with a salary of 1200 G.P. Currency, which was the same salary that was then being paid to Simon Fraser, Alexander McKay, Hugh McGillis, and James Hughes. G.P. undoubtedly stands for Grand Portage, but I have been unable to learn what was the unit of value.

From here he had intended to cross southward to the Red Deer river and descend it in a boat, but having been lamed in some way, he sent four men, Chauvette, La Gassi, Clement, and Jacco Cardinal, on this journey. As he records the fact that they started from Rocky Mountain House, and that a boat had been built for them beforehand, and as some of them at all events are afterwards mentioned in his journal, it seems probable that these men successfully descended the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan rivers, being probably the first white men to accomplish this journey.
The next two years were spent by Thompson at Rocky Mountain House or in its vicinity, and in exploring the country to the west of it as far as the foot of the Rocky Mountains from the Bow river northward to the Saskat­chewan. Then he moved to the Peace river, and made his headquarters at the trading post at the Forks, which had been built by Alexander Mackenzie in 1792, when preparing to make his journey westward to the Pacific. While there he made a survey up the river to the last post occupied by the traders, and when leaving the country he descended and surveyed the river to its mouth in Lake Athabaska. After leaving Peace river, he went back into the Muskrat country, where he had previously spent four years while in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company. Through the inattention and carelessness of some of the partners of the North-West Com­pany, and through the greater efficiency in management shown by the Hudson's Bay Company, the trade of this district had been allowed to fall largely into the hands of the latter Company.
In previous years, while working under the jurisdiction of York Factory, Thompson had had to contend against the traders from Churchill, as well as against the Canadian traders of the North-West Company. On this occasion the Hudson's Bay traders from York had withdrawn, and had left the field to those from Churchill who were now under the control of Thompson's old schoolmate, George Charles. At the same time there was also a third interest struggling for the trade in the X Y Company of Montreal.
Thompson brought with him three canoes loaded with trading supplies, which he distributed among five different trading posts from Cranberry lake on the south to Indian lake on the north. He himself went almost directly to Nelson House on the Churchill river, where George Charles, governor of the Churchill district, now had his headquarters, and from there he went a little farther down the river to a place called Musquawegan (or Bear's Backbone), where he built a house and spent the winter. That summer Charles had made a prisoner of Louis Du pleix of the North-West Company for stealing furs from the Hudson's Bay Company and had sent him to Churchill, where he was to be tried. But neither this incident, nor the hard conditions of the fur trade, served to cause any serious disagreement between old friends.

During the winter they extended to each other various civilities, including the loan of books, and when Thompson was leaving Churchill river in the spring of 1805, everything that he did not need to take with him was left in the care of Charles in the Hudson's Bay Company's store at Nelson House. The two men had done their utmost to outwit each other in trade for the benefit of their respective companies, but at the same time they had remained neighbours and friends.
After rounding up the furs from Indian lake, Musqua­wegan, and Nelson House, which he calls "the old post," he started for Cumberland with all hands, picking up the furs from the post on Cranberry lake as he passed it. At Cumber­ land House, where he was welcomed by Hamilton, then in charge, he baled his furs and sent them down to Kamini. stikwia with Morrin and Carter, while he spent the summer visiting his posts at Reindeer lake and river and at Cran­berry lake.
In the autumn, with a new and larger supply of goods, he started back into the same country. On the way he dis­mantled the post on Cranberry lake, and passing the old post in Reed lake, where he and Malcolm Ross had spent a winter together, he decided on a place to build a house near where an old house had stood about twenty years before, for here fish were said to be most plentiful, and it was on fish that he was obliged to rely almost entirely for food. He sent Connelly on to Indian lake, Joseph Plante to Old Fort (Nelson House), and Franqois Morrin to Pukkatowagan (Setting) lake, while he himself, surrounded by his family, spent the winter at the house which he had just built on the shore of Reed lake.
The following spring, when all the men came in from his three outposts, the returns were found to be small, and it was probably with considerable relief that he handed over the charge of the district to a partner named Wills and started eastward for Kaministikwia.

On November 5, 1804 the North-West and X Y Com­panies had discontinued their expensive struggle for the furs caught by the Indians and agreed to unite their forces, and David Thompson's name appears among the list of the partners as having signed the agreement by attorney. As a conse­quence of the strength thus gained by union, the North-West Company decided to extend its trade into the country west of the Rocky Mountains which is now covered by the province of British Columbia and the states of Idaho, Wash­ington, Oregon, and the western portion of Montana.
In 1805 Simon Fraser was sent up the Peace river to establish posts at its head-waters and around the sources of the Fraser river, in the country subsequently known as New Caledonia, and in the following year Thompson was sent up the Saskatchewan river to his old home at Rocky Mountain House, to be ready to cross the mountains the following year. An attempt to trade with the Indians west of the Rocky Mountains made from this place in 1801 had been futile, but renewed efforts were now determined on. On the previous occasion Duncan McGillivray, who was stationed at Rocky Mountain House, was probably Thompson's superior in the Company, and controlled the policy of ex­ploration pursued from the uppermost trading post on the Saskatchewan river, but now Thompson himself was in charge and was to lead the trading parties through the mountains.
During the winter great preparations were made for an expedition westward, and John McDonald of Garth, who was in charge at Fort de l'Isle on the Saskatchewan river, came up to Rocky Mountain House twice to assist in the arrangements, on one occasion in February going to the mountains himself. Quesnel and Finan McDonald, who were Thompson's assistants, also went to the mountains and freighted up some goods in advance. But everything was done quietly, for the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company­ under a trader named J. P. Prudens were living in an ad joining house, and were watching all their movements.
Having spent the winter of 1806-7 at Rocky Mountain House, Thompson pushed westward, accompanied by his wife and family, to the Columbia river, through what has since been called the Howse Pass, though Joseph Howse, who was a clerk in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, did not travel over it until it had been beaten by Thompson for two years. For three years he travelled backwards and forwards across the mountains through this pass, during which time he was engaged in establishing numerous trading posts on the Columbia river and its tributaries, in making surveys of every mile travelled, and in taking astronomical observations to supplement these surveys and to determine the positions of the houses which he occupied.
While Thompson was thus extending the fur-trade of the North-West Company into the country west of the Rocky Mountains, his old employers had not forgotten him, and the reports of his explorations were anxiously listened to by the Governors of the Hudson's Bay Company in their board­room in London. In the spring of 1808, the Governors wrote to the Council at York Factory asking how far west Thompson had succeeded in going, and John McNab and his colleagues on the Council sent answer that he had wintered across the mountains the previous year.
That winter McNab and his Council determined, if possible, to see just how far Thompson had gone, and con­sequently in 1809 they sent Joseph Howse, a writer in their employ, in default of some one better trained in exploratory work, to go west to the Rocky Mountains and discover where Thompson was going every year. After a short journey into the mountains Howse returned with his report.
In 1810 Howse again went west, this time prepared with a plentiful supply of trading goods, and ascending to the head­waters of the Saskatchewan river, along the route followed by Thompson in previous years, he crossed the divide and reached the Columbia river, which he ascended to its head, and thence made his way to the Flathead river north of Flat­head lake, where he spent the winter of 1810-11, not far from the site of the present town of Kalispell in Montana.
But one winter of such trading, near the battle-ground of the Piegan and Flathead Indians, was enough, and in the spring of 1811 Howse and all the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company abandoned the Columbia valley to their rivals of the North-West Company, and did not enter it again until after the union of the two companies in 1821.
In going up the Saskatchewan river, Thompson had been obliged to pass through the country of the Piegan Indians, who were constantly at war with the Kutenai Indians on the west side of the mountains, and naturally the Piegan objected to a trade which supplied their enemies with knives, spears, guns, powder, bullets, and many other articles which made them much more formidable in battle than they had been before. Even Thompson's friendship with them could not outweigh their objections to this trade, and they warned him that he must stop taking supplies to their enemies, or they would be obliged to kill him and all his party.
In 1810 they intercepted Thompson's brigade in the mountains and forced the men to fly for their lives back down the river. But the Piegan were Indians of the plains and not of the woods, and Thompson, who knew them thoroughly, decided to outwit them for all time by establishing a route so far to the north that they would not be able to reach or interfere with it. He therefore descended the Saskatchewan for a short distance to the site of an abandoned house which had been known as " Boggy Hall." The season was already late, for there had been just time enough to cross the moun­tains by the usual route, and the Indians had caused him a great deal of delay, but in spite of the terrors of a journey over these mountains by an unknown pass so late in the year that it would probably extend into the heart of winter, he started with a train of pack-horses north-westward through the forest to the head of the Athabaska river, and, after overcoming tremendous difficulties and enduring extreme privations, he reached the Columbia river at the mouth of the Canoe river, at a place now known as the Big Bend, on January 26, 1811. It has often been stated that Thompson was sent on a rush journey to the mouth of the Columbia river to forestall the employees of the Pacific Fur Company in building a trading post there, but in his journals there is no intimation whatever that such was his errand. He was perfectly well aware that the Pacific Fur Company was making elaborate preparations to establish trading posts on the Columbia river, but for several years he and his people had occupied advantageous positions on that river and its tribu­taries, and he felt that he was able to hold the trade. He was extending the fur trade of the North-West Company among the Indians west of the mountains, and was searching out and surveying the best routes by which those Indians could be reached and by which the furs obtained from them could be transported to Montreal, and he travelled deliber­ately and carefully with that object always in view. At the same time he remembered how the North-West Company had been turned out of Minnesota by the agents of the American government, and he determined to avoid a similar contingency here by publicly claiming for Great Britain the country in which his posts were situated.
In the spring of 1811 he ascended the Columbia river as usual and descended the Kootenay river to his old trading posts, travelled by canoe and on horseback among these posts, and then returned to the Columbia river, which he reached at Ilthkoyape or Kettle Falls. From this place he descended the stream to Fort Astoria at its mouth, where he landed on July 15, 1811, and where he found Duncan McDougall, an old partner of his, in charge for the Pacific Fur Company.

After spending a few days at Astoria with McDougall, he started back up the Columbia river to the mouth of Snake river. After travelling backwards and forwards among his trading posts until the autumn, he again reached Ilthkoyape Falls. Here he built a canoe and ascended the river through Arrow lakes, past the present site of Revelstoke, and up through the Dalles des Morts, whose treacherous rapids and whirlpools have been fatal to so many boatmen, to the Big Bend, or Boat Encampment, and thus completed the survey of the river from its source to its mouth. Portions of this river have never been resurveyed since that time, so that Thompson's surveys still appear on every map of the Columbia river that is published.
Thompson had now been more than twenty-eight years in northern and western America, and his survey of the Columbia had completed his preparations for the making of the map of north-western America toward which he had been working during these years. The winter of 1811-12 he spent on Clark's Fork and its tributaries, with headquarters at Saleesh House, and in the spring of 1812 he recrossed the mountains and set off down the Athabaska and Churchill rivers for Montreal. He arrived in Montreal late in the summer, after a long and arduous journey and a narrow escape from the Americans, between whom and Great Britain war had just been declared; and never again did he visit the scenes of his western exploits. At this point the narrative which is here presented. concludes.
Thompson took up his residence at Terrebonne, in the province of Quebec, and immediately enlisted as an ensign in
the 2nd Battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Roderick Mac­kenzie, with his old companion Simon Fraser as one of his fellow officers. He spent the two years I813-14 in preparing his map of western Canada for the North-West Company, on a scale of about fifteen miles to an inch, from the observations and surveys that he had made during the previous twenty-three years. This map, which is in the possession of the Govern­ment of the Province of Ontario, and is reproduced on a some­what reduced scale in the present volume, is entitled:

CC Map of the North West Territory of the Province of Canada, 1792-1812, embracing region between Latitudes 45 and 56, and Longitudes 84 and 124­
(, Map made for the North West Company in 1813-1814.")
It is interesting to note that it is almost on the same scale as the great international map of the world which is now being prepared under the auspices of the governments of the various civilized countries.
On February 10, 1814, he was registered in Terrebonne as a land surveyor. From 1816 to 1826 he was engaged in sur­veying and defining the boundary line, on the part of Great Britain, between Canada and the United States. He was employed in 1817 in the St. Lawrence, and thence proceeding westward around the shores of the Great Lakes he reached the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods in 1825. In 1834 he surveyed Lake St. Francis on the St. Lawrence river; in 1837 he made a survey of the canoe route from Lake Huron to the Ottawa river; and a few years later he made a survey of Lake St. Peter.
The last years of his life were spent by 1 "Thompson first at Williamstown, Glengarry county, Ontario, and afterwards in Longueuil, opposite Montreal. In Williamstown, he bought the property of the Rev. John Bethune, the father of the former Bishop of Toronto; and for a time he was in com­fortable, if not indeed wealthy, circumstances. But towards the end of his life he fell on evil days. A mortgage which he held on the Presbyterian church in Williams town, the congregation proved unable to pay; and Thompson deeded to them the church and the grounds! He set up his
1 This statement depends upon the authority of one of David Thompson's daughters, Mrs. W. R. Scott.
1 Thompson had seven sons and six daughters. In the family Bible there
are inscribed in Thompson's own handwriting the following entries:
"David Thompson) born in the Westminster Parish of St. John, April 30th,
1770.
"Charlotte Small, wife of David Thompson, born September 1st, 1785. at
Isle a la Crosse, married to David Thompson, June 10th, 1799.
"Fanny Thompson, born June 10th, 1801. Rocky Mountain House.
" Samuel Thompson, born March 5th, 1804- Peace River Forks.
,. Emma Thompson, born March, 1806. Reed Lake House.
" John Thompson, born August ~5th, 1808. Boggy Hall, Saskatchewan.
"Joshua Thompson, born March 28th, 181 I. fort Augustus.
" Henry Thompson, born July 30th, 1813. Terrebonne Village.
"John Thompson, deceased January 11th, 1814, at 7 A.M. in the Village of
Terrebonne, buried in Montreal the 12th inst. No. 353. Aged 5 years and near 5 months, a beautiful, promising boy.
"Emma Thompson, deceased Feb. 22nd, 1814, at 7.25 P.M. Aged 7 years and near 11 months. Buried close touching her brother in Montreal. No 353. An amiable, innocent girl, too good for this world.
"Charlotte Thompson, born 7th July, 1815, at 1 Ii A.M. Village of Terre­bonne.
"Elizabeth Thompson, born 25th April, 1817, at 8 P.M., at the Village of
Williamstown, River Raisin, Glengarry.
" William Thompson, born 9th November, 1819, at the Village of Williams­
town, River Raisin, Glengarry.
"Thomas Thompson, born July 10th, 1822, at 4 P.M. Williamstown, Glen­garry, Up. Canada.
"George Thompson, born 13th July, I A.M., 1824, Williamstown, Glengarry,
Up. Canada, died August 27th, lot A.M. Buried August 28th, 1824. Aged
7 weeks.
"Mary Thompson, born April 2, 1827, at Williamstown, 12 P.M. Glengarry
Up. Canada.
"Eliza Thompson, born March 4, 1829, at Williamstown, baptized by the
Rev. John Mackenzie, April 12, 1829.
"Henry Thompson, died 23 October, 1855, aged 42, buried in Mount Royal
Cemetery, Montreal."

sons 1 in business, and they failed; and in paying off their debts, he impoverished himself. When he removed to Longueuil, he was still able to make a comfortable living, until his eyesight failed him. His position then became pathetic. He was so poor that he had to sell his instruments and even to pawn his coat to procure food for himself and his family. In one of his note-books, he writes: "Borrowed 21. 64. from a friend. Thank God for this relief." And in another place he tells of trying to sell to a gentleman his maps of Lake Superior and his sketches of the Rocky Mountains. "He would not purchase, but loaned me $5.00. A good relief, for I had been a week without a penny.
Thompson died at Longueuil, on February 10, 1857, at the ripe old age of nearly eighty-seven years. His wife survived him by only three months; she died on May 7 of the same year; and they both lie buried in Mount Royal cemetery in Montreal, without mark or monument to show their resting­place.
David Thompson was a man of somewhat singular appear­ance. "He was plainly dressed, quiet and observant," wrote the naturalist of the International Boundary Commission
with regard to his first meeting him in the year 1817. 1 "His figure was short and com pact, and his black hair was worn long all round, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears, just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardener's ruddy brown, while the expression of deeply furrowed features was friendly and intelligent, but his cut ­short nose gave him an odd look. ...I might have spared this description of Mr. David Thompson by saying he greatly resembled Curran, the Irish orator." Dr. Bigsby conceived a great admiration for his colleague. "Never mind his Bunyan-like face and cropped hair; he has a very powerful mind, and a singular faculty of picture-making. He can create a wilderness and people it with warring savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with you in a snow storm, so clearly and palpably, that only shut your eyes and you hear the crack of the rifle, or feel the snow-flakes on your cheeks as he talks."
One of Thompson's most striking characteristics was his piety, the fruit of his early years in the Grey Coat School in Westminster. The" thank Good Providence," with which he so frequently concludes the account of his expeditions, was no mere formula, but the sincere thanksgiving of a devout
man." Our astronomer, Mr. Thompson," wrote Dr. Bigsby, l "was a firm churchman; while most of our men were Roman Catholics. Many a time have I seen these uneducated Canadians most attentively and thankfully listen, as they sat upon some bank of shingle, to Mr. Thompson, while he read to them, in most extraordinarily pronounced French, three chapters out of the Old Testament, and as many out of the New, adding such explanations as seemed to him suitable." Thompson's piety was not of an obtrusive sort, but there were few white men in the West in those early days who bore so consistently as he did the white flower of a blameless life.

1 J. J. Bigsby, The shoe and Canoe, vol. i. pp. 113-14.


Typical of him was his attitude towards the trading of spirituous liquors to the Indians. He was a strong opponent of the liquor traffic; and while he was in charge of the western posts no alcoholic liquors were allowed to be taken to them. The years in which Thompson was in the West were perhaps the period in which this debasing trade was at its worst. Rival companies were vying with each other for the furs; and cheap spirits were regarded by the traders as the most profitable sort of barter. Such, however, was not Thompson's view. He believed that the use of intoxicating liquor in trade was a short-sighted policy; and he gives in his own words an amusing account of how he prevented the trade from spread­ing during his time beyond the Rockies.
"1 was obliged," he says in his account of the expedition of 1808, "to take two kegs of alcohol, overruled by my Partners (Messrs Dond McTavish and Jo McDonald [of] Gart[h]) for I had made it a law to myself, that no alcohol should pass the Mountains in my company, and thus be clear of the sad sight ofdrunkeness, and its many evils: but these gentlemen insisted upon alcohol being the most profitable article that could be taken for the indian trade. In this I knew they had mis­calculated; accordingly when we came to the defiles of the Mountains
­
1 J. J. Bigsby, The shoe and Canoe, vol. ii. pp. 205-6.

I placed the two Kegs of Alcohol on a vicious horse; and by noon the Kegs were empty, and in pieces, the Horse rubbing his load against the Rocks to get rid of it; I wrote to my partners what I had done; and that I would do the same to every Keg of Alcohol, and for the next six years I had charge of the furr trade on the west side of the Moun­tains, no further attempt was made to introduce spirituous Liquors. "
Thus for a few years at least Thompson kept the curse of alcoholism from debasing the Indians of southern British Columbia, Washington, and Idaho.
It is difficult for us at this time to appreciate to its full extent the work which Thompson did for the furtherance of geographical knowledge on the continent of North America. It is necessary to go back a little and to review briefly what was known of the geography of western Canada at the time when Thompson landed on the shore of Hudson Bay. An idea may be obtained of the geographical knowledge that was prevalent in the latter half of the eighteenth century by reference to page xxv, where the books which were used in the Grey Coat School at the time are enumerated. It is true that geographical knowledge and progress were just beginning to pervade the thoughts of the educated people throughout the world, "but exploration, led by Captain James Cook and a few others, was being largely confined to the ocean rather than to the land. Moreover, the settlements in eastern America had carried with them a knowledge of the geography of the country westward as far as Lake Superior and the valley of the Mississippi, but beyond these parts the country was still entirely in the hands of the native Indians. Away to the north, a mining fever had induced the Hudson's Bay Company to send a man inland from Hudson Bay to investigate the report of an enormous copper deposit in the vicinity of the Coppermine river, and this man, Samuel Hearne, had made a sketch of the route which he followed.
In 1784, the year in which Thompson reached Hudson Bay, the great map of the world accompanying the account of Cook's third voyage was published, and in that map, part of which is reproduced in this volume, it will be seen that almost the whole of north-western America, with the excep­tion of that portion sketched by Hearne in his journey to the Coppermine river, is left blank. This map represents the very latest information in the possession of the British Govern­ment and people, and, in fact, in the possession of the whole civilized world, at that time.
Thompson had thus a large part of a new continent ready for his work, and he must have recognized that rough sketches, such as had undoubtedly been made by some of his com­panions in the fur trade, were of little permanent value, and that to make such a map as would be a credit to him and an advantage to geographers in the world at large, he must first carefully determine the positions of some of the principal places or natural objects in the country. In fact, he recognized the true importance of a great trigonometrical survey of the country, with some places carefully located by observa­tions for latitude and longitude, and then with connecting surveys made in such ways as were possible to him between those places. Thus, from the very first, he laid his plans for a map of the country carefully and well.
In the prosecution of the fur trade Thompson travelled more than 50,000 miles in canoes, on horseback, and on foot through what was then an unmapped country, and no matter what the difficulties or dangers of the journeys might be, he never neglected his surveys. While a good deal of this dis­tance was made up of trips over ground that he might have been over before, advantage was always taken to make re­ surveys and check the correctness or accuracy of previous work. He always continued to occupy his spare time in the winter, when he was not travelling, in taking observations and determining with great care the positions of any places at which he might be stopping.
He obtained a thorough knowledge of the topography of the whole of the country which he was able to visit. The lengths of the rivers, the heights of the mountains, the extent of the plains, were all alike investigated, and the results were recorded by him. AU the explorers who preceded him, and most of those who followed him, were content to survey individual lines of travel and to be able to place these lines in approximately their correct positions on a map, but Thompson's ambition was to accomplish much greater results than these, namely, to determine and delineate the physical features of the whole of north-western America. Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser, two of the early explorers whose, work has received public recognition, devoted all their time and energy during their exploring trips to the one object of successfully accomplishing their explorations and surveys, and after these explorations were completed they turned to other work; but Thompson was not a spasmodic explorer; with him surveying was his chief pleasure and life-work. During only one year, when on his journey to the Mandan Indian villages and to the head waters of the Mississippi river, was he able to devote his whole time to surveying and exploring work. During the rest of his life in the West he was merely taking advantage of the positions in which he might be situated. His business was the trading in furs, but he was in the middle of unknown country, surrounded on all sides by pristine wilderness waiting to, be surveyed. In the intervals of his trade, he was exploring, surveying, and depicting by regular methods on the map, the features of the country in which he was living, so that ever afterwards anyone else would be able to form an intelligent idea of it. The excellence and greatness of his work is accounted for largely by this systematic continuation of surveys, practically without a break, for twenty-three years.
His surveys were not merely rough sketches sufficient to give some idea of the general character of the country, but were careful traverses made by a master in the art, short courses being taken with a magnetic: compass, the variation of which was constantly determined,. distances being carefully estimated by the time taken to travel them, and the whole checked by numerous astronomical observations for latitude and longitude.
His astronomical observations were made with the greatest care, his latitudes being taken from the sun or any star or planet which was conveniently situated at the time, while his
longitudes were usually determined by one or more observa­tions for lunar distances. Geographers will readily appreciate the excellence of this work by a glance at the following table of longitudes chosen at random from the large number recorded by him between the years 1789 and 1812.

Place Thompson’s Longitude. Longitude by latest Surveys

York Factory 92° 29' 20" 92° 27'
Cumberland House. 102° 13 102° 16'
Kootanae House. 115° 51 40 116° 00
Buckingham House. 110° 41' 110° 45'
Peace River Forks. 117° 13' 14" 117° 23'
McDonnell's House. 99° 27 15 99° 37
Saleesh House 115° 22' 51" 115° 15'
Spokane House . 117° 27' 117° 33'
Rocky Mountain House. 114°: 52' 114° 57'
Fort Augustus. 113° 11' 113° 2'

A reduced copy of the great map which he drew is pub­lished at the end of the present volume, and by comparing it with the Cook map opposite page Ix some little idea may be gained of the magnitude of the work which Thompson, almost single. handed, accomplished in the intervals of time that he was able to spare from his work as a fur trader.
It may seem strange that a man who has done such mag­nificent work as was accomplished by this great geographer should have received so little recognition. But recognition is, or should be, founded on knowledge, and his geographical work has remained almost unknown. The first and perhaps the chief reason which has contributed to the general ignor­ance of Thompson's work was the remarkable modesty and single-mindedness of the man himself. Self-abasement had doubtless been taught to him in the Grey Coat School, and his lonely life in the West had emphasized this side of his character. He never talked much, or boasted of his own exploits, and his writing was confined almost entirely to his note-books, in which he entered with perfect regularity the details of his surveys and the incidents of trade.
It is true that in his later years, when the competence which he had accumulated in the West had disappeared, and when he was scarcely able to get enough work to do to enable him to provide food for his family, he wrote the account of his life in the West which is here given; but it was not published. l
He was an excellent story teller, but very retiring, and the fact that his wife was a native of the West and, like other natives, perhaps shy and diffident, doubtless kept him from participating in the social life of Montreal. He was hardly the sort of man who was likely to be in his element among the rollicking, heavy-drinking North-Westers who made Beaver Hall Club in Montreal their headquarters.
Moreover, during the time when he was in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, his note-books and maps were turned over to the Company, and by them passed on to Arrowsmith, the map maker, in London, who incorporated them in the maps of British North America, and for this information Arrowsmith gave the Hudson's Bay Company credit, but nothing was said of Thompson, the man who had made the surveys. Therefore, his work was entirely unknown to anyone outside of the Hudson's Bay Company at that time; and as to the Hudson's Bay Company's records themselves, they are even yet practically closed to investigators.

1 Thompson's daughter, Mrs. Shaw. is authority for the statement that
Washington Irving endeavoured to obtain the manuscript, but that the terms or conditions which he offered, chiefly as regards acknowledgment, were not satisfactory, and Thompson would not give it to him.

After he had joined the North-West Company, he con­tinued to hand over his sketches and the records of his surveys to his associates, and when his great map was finally com­pleted it was taken by them and bung on the walls of their board-room in Fort William, where scarcely anyone but the traders themselves was likely to see it. The information contained in it was sent to Arrowsmith as before, but we look in vain on any of his maps for recognition of Thompson or his work. That some people of influence at the time recog­nised his ability is certain, or this poor boy from a charity school in London, who had educated himself as a surveyor on the plains and mountains of the West, would not have been appointed as astronomer for the British Government to run the boundary line between the United States and British North America. But the record of that survey was made on maps and not in books. The people who study maps are few compared to those who read books, and consequently, often great map may remain in manuscript unpublished when even trivial books are published with profit and read with enthusiasm.
In addition to the reasons for non-recognition inherent in the man himself, the fur trade of the country, which was its only tangible asset at that time, became centred in the hands of two great Companies, and after the union of these Com­panies in 1821, in the Hudson's Bay Company alone, which became a virtual monopoly with headquarters in London. Private enterprise was stifled, and the people of Canada, and in fact of the whole of North America, lost touch with a country in which they had no commercial interest and in the trade of which they were not allowed to participate. Thus, while thrilling accounts of adventure in north-western America, such as Irving’s Astoria, or Ross's Fur Hunters of the Far West, might be read with interest, regardless of location, accounts of work done to promote a fuller knowledge of the country were disregarded.
After Thompson left north-western Canada, the inspira­tion for surveying that country died completely out, except where it was connected with the exploration of the northern shore of the continent of America, and the determination of the possibility of a water passage from Europe to Asia to the north of it; and when in 1857, forty-five years after the termination of Thompson's work, the Government of Canada began to look westward and wanted a map of western Canada, the very best that it could do was to republish Thompson's map of 1813, without, however, giving him credit for it, except by a small note in one corner; and to this day some parts of the maps of Canada published by the Canadian Government, the railway companies, and others, are taken from Thompson's map.
Thompson's maps and note-books are a lasting monument to the work he accomplished for north-western America, and while this monument has remained in obscurity up to the present, the people, both of the east and west, will eventually recognize its grandeur, and will do homage to the memory of the man who designed and constructed it.

From the introduction to David Thompson Naratives, 1784--1812
edited by J. B. TYRRELL 1912