Active trading with the Indians began at once. The lake was named Stuart in honour of Fraser's companion, and the ground was cleared for a palisaded fort, which, when erected, they named Fort St James. The scene was enchanting. The lake wound for a distance of fifty miles amid the foot-hills of the mighty forested mountains. It was four or five miles wide, and was gemmed with green islets; and all round, appearing through the clouds in jagged outline, were the opal summits of the snowy peaks. No wonder the two Scotsmen named the new inland empire New Caledonia--after their native land. It will be remembered that M'Dougall had heard of another mountain tarn. This was forty miles south of Stuart Lake, at the headwaters of the Nechaco, the north fork of the Fraser. Stuart went overland south to spy out the southern lake; and his report was of such an entrancing region--heavily forested, with an abundance of game and fish--that Fraser glided down the Stuart river and poled up the Nechaco to the lake which Stuart had {90} already named after his chief. Again a fort was erected and named Fort Fraser, making three forts in the interior of New Caledonia. Fraser had sent a request to the directors of the North-West Company to be permitted to fit out an expedition down the great river, which he thought was the Columbia; and in the spring of 1807 two canoes under Jules Quesnel were sent out with goods. Quesnel arrived at Fort St James in the autumn, bringing from the east the alarming word that Lewis and Clark had gone overland and taken possession of all the territory between the Missouri and the mouth of the Columbia. No time was to be lost by Fraser in establishing a claim to the region to the west of the Rockies between the Peace and the Columbia. Fraser went down the river and strengthened British possession by building a fourth fort--Fort George at the mouth of the Nechaco. This was to be the starting-point of the expedition to the Pacific. Then, towards the end of May 1808, he set out down the great river with four canoes, nineteen voyageurs, and Stuart and Quesnel as first assistants. [Illustration: Simon Fraser. After the portrait in the Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.] Fifteen miles below the fort the river walls narrowed and the canoes swept into the roaring cataract of Fort George canyon. {91} The next day they shot through the Cottonwood canyon, and paused at the point thenceforth to be known as Quesnel. On the third day they passed Mackenzie's farthest south--the site of the present Alexandria. Below this the river was unexplored and unknown. Suddenly the enormous flood-waters swollen by melting mountain snows contracted to a width of only forty yards, and with a fearful roar swept into a rock-walled gorge. In sublime unconsciousness of heroism Fraser records: