Thompson enquired of these people regarding the course of the river both up and down. From them he learned that the village at Kettle Falls was the highest along the stream that had survived the incursions of the Piegans. Below them there was a journey of ninety miles of rapids, at the end of which stood another village of salmon fishers. Beyond this they could tell him nothing. Meanwhile the canoemen were busy preparing a boat. In this region timber was very scarce. They had to journey seven miles from the river before they found a clump of cedar from which they could hew the planking of a canoe; and it was not until the third day of July that the boat was finished. With five French Canadians, two Iroquois Indians, and a couple of the natives for interpreters, Thompson now embarked on the last stage of his journey to the sea. He remembered how, following the settlement of the international boundary west of Lake Superior, the traders of the North West Company had been driven from a country which they had made their own. By that settlement, the forty-ninth parallel had been accepted as the line from the Lake of the Woods to the watershed of the Rocky Mountains. West of the Rockies however, all was still debatable land; and in that vast region, with its timbered mountains and rich valleys, the wealth of fish in its rivers and of minerals hidden in its bosom, he claimed the right of a discoverer. At the stern of his little craft, the Union Jack floated proudly in the breeze; and at each halting place, Thompson posted a written notice in the name of the North West Company of merchants from Canada, formally taking possession of the country for His Majesty, King George the Third. Down the river sped the canoe, the paddlers with long swinging strokes easily keeping abreast of the stream. Most of the rapids they were able to shoot; and before nightfall they had completed the ninety miles to the village of which they had heard above. Tents were pitched and Thompson summoned the chiefs to smoke with him. In a short while the chief arrived, followed by his men in single file. All sat down in a circle about the tent, and the chief made a brief speech, welcoming the strangers and offering them presents of dried salmon and native herbs. Pipes were then lighted and solemnly passed round. Following this the chief delivered a long harangue, in which he expressed the hope that the white men would provide his people with guns, ammunition, axes, knives, awls, not to mention steels and flints and many other articles of which they stood sadly in need. They were, he said, able and willing to hunt, and would pay for everything they got. At present, however, they had only their hands with which to procure food and clothing.