The chilly reception which Thompson met after his return from Lake Athabaska was enough to quench the enthusiasm of any man. He might have lain down under the blow. In that case he would no doubt have ended his days as an obscure and broken-spirited trader, embittered by his fate, but powerless so late in life to change it. Another course, however, was open to him, if he had the courage and self-reliance to take it. This was to throw up his post with the Hudson's Bay Company, and seek employment in other quarters where his talents would meet with the recognition they deserved. In the long winter evenings at Reindeer lake, he weighed the problem before him. Colen, his chief, had undoubtedly failed to appreciate the value of his work. Worse still, he had hampered it, since for the last two years he had neglected even to supply Thompson with the _Nautical Almanac_ so necessary for his surveys. But behind Colen stood the Company. How far had they given him the sympathy and encouragement which he needed? The directors, he felt, might easily have had the northern part of the continent surveyed as far as the Pacific coast, and thus greatly extended the range of their trade. This they could have accomplished at trifling expense, for in England there were numbers of highly-trained naval officers on half pay, who would have jumped at the chance of employment. But any explorations which they had undertaken were solely at the behest of the Colonial Office. His feelings toward the Company may not have been altogether justified. Nevertheless, he could only conclude that there was little or no future for him in the service. With Thompson to think was to act. On the 28th of May, 1797, he left his post on Reindeer lake and walked south through the bush for seventy-five miles to the nearest house of the North-Westers. After ten days spent there, he proceeded to Grand Portage, the headquarters of the Company at the west end of Lake Superior, in order that he might offer his services to the merchants from Canada. Situated on a small bay at the mouth of Pigeon river, Grand Portage had been for several years the general dépôt for the trader of the North West Company, the lair from which those "sly wolves of the North" had sallied forth to work such havoc with the trade of the English on Hudson Bay. Along the shore ran a line of docks, which each summer were piled high, now with the parcels of merchandise for the interior trade, now with the packs of furs which had been gathered from the distant trading posts for the market in the east. Along the bay front and up the bank of the river sprawled the village of log huts in which dwelt the half-breed families of the French voyageurs.