This adventure by no means took the edge off his appetite for exploration. As he had proved that Mackenzie River did not flow to the Pacific Ocean, he made up his mind to get there some other way. In 1793, early in May, he once more left Lake Athabasca behind, and this time steered his canoes up the Peace River to its source in the mountains. He crossed the divide, and began to descend an unknown stream, but as this only flowed south he struck over land to the west, and on the 22nd of July came out on salt water, near Bella Coola. He had then only twenty pounds of pemmican left, with fifteen of rice and six of flour, for his party of ten; but they managed to get safely home to the fort after a month’s hard travel across the mountains. Mackenzie’s troubles had been many and great, from cataract and precipice, from hostile Indians and cowardly guides; but he won the fame of the first man to cross the whole width of the continent from Atlantic to Pacific. In 1806, the year after Trafalgar, the young Welshman, David Thompson, another of this Company’s officers, went up the North Saskatchewan to Rocky Mountain House and across the Rockies to the Columbia. He spent several years exploring the mountains and establishing posts for trade, and at last descended the whole length of the Columbia to the Pacific. At the mouth of the river he found that another party had got there ahead of him, and had built a fort under the flag of the United States. As a matter of fact, two explorers named Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had reached that point in 1806, being the first white men to cross the height of land from the Missouri to the coast. The fort had been established five years later by a trading expedition sent round Cape Horn from New York by John Jacob Astor. It was captured by the North West Company’s men during the War of 1812, and Astor allowed the Company to buy out his rights; but later on, as we shall see, it was decided that this part of the coast should belong to the United States.