It is barely twenty years since Peter Pond came to Athabasca and Peace River region, but already there are six forts between Athabasca Lake and the Rockies--Vermilion and Encampment Island under the management of the half-breed son of Sir Alexander MacKenzie, then Dunvegan and St. John’s and Rocky Mountain House managed by the McGillivrays and Archibald Norman McLeod. By 1797, James Finlay had followed MacKenzie’s trail across the Divide, then struck up the north branch of Peace River, now known as Finlay River; but it was not till 1805 that the fur traders, who made flying trips across the mountains, remained to build forts. In 1793, when MacKenzie crossed the mountain, there had joined the Northwest Company as clerk, a lad of nineteen, the son of a ruined loyalist in New York State, whose widow came to live in Cornwall, Ontario. This boy was Simon Fraser. Two years later, in 1795, there had come to the Northwest Company from Hudson Bay that English surveyor, David Thompson, whom the MacKenzies had met in Athabasca working for the Hudson’s Bay traders. David Thompson had been born in 1770 and was educated in the Blue Coat School, London. In 1789 he had come as surveyor to Churchill and York, penetrating inland as far as Athabasca; but Colen, chief factor of York, did not encourage purely scientific explorations. Thompson quit the English service in disgust, coming down to the Nor’Westers on Lake Superior. These were the two young men--Fraser, son of the New York loyalist; Thompson, the English surveyor--that the Northwest Company appointed in 1805 to explore the wilderness beyond the Rockies. [Illustration: NORTHWEST TERRITORIES] CHAPTER XXV 1800-1810 DAVID THOMPSON, THE NOR’WESTER, DASHES FOR THE COLUMBIA--HE EXPLORES EAST KOOTENAY, WEST KOOTENAY, WASHINGTON AND OREGON, BUT FINDS ASTOR’S MEN ON THE FIELD--HOW THE ASTORIANS ARE JOCKEYED OUT OF ASTORIA--FRASER FINDS HIS WAY TO THE SEA BY ANOTHER GREAT RIVER. Let us follow Thompson first. He had joined the Nor’Westers just when the question of the International Boundary was in dispute between Canada and the United States. (1) In 1796, lest other Northwest forts were south of the Boundary, he first explored from Lake Superior to Rainy Lake and the Lake of the Woods and Winnipeg River and Winnipeg Lake, advancing as fast as the brigades traveled, running his lines at lightning pace. Then he struck across to Lake Manitoba and the Assiniboine and Qu’ Appelle. His first survey practically ran in a circle round the bounds of the modern Manitoba, except on the south.