When he returns to the mountains In 1808, Thompson joins Henry’s brigade coming west from Pembina. It is September when they reach Edmonton, and both companies have by this time built fur posts at Howse’s Pass, known as Rocky Mountain House, of which Henry takes charge for the Nor’Westers. Sixteen days on horseback bring Thompson to the mountains. There horses are exchanged for dogs, and the explorer sleds south through East Kootenay to Kootenay House on Windermere Lake, where provisions and furs are stored. Thompson winters at Windermere. In April of 1809 he sets out for the modern Idaho and Montana and establishes trading posts on the Flathead Lake southeast, and the Pend d’Oreille Lakes southwest, leaving Firman McDonald, the Highlander, as commander of the Flathead Department, with McMillan and Methode and Forcier and a dozen others as traders. He is back in Edmonton by June, 1810--“thank God”--he ejaculates in his diary, and at once proceeds East, where he learns astounding news at Fort William. John Jacob Astor, the New York merchant, who bought Nor’Westers’ furs at Montreal, has organized a Pacific Fur Company, and into its ranks he has lured by promise of partnership, friends of Thompson, such good old Nor’Westers as John Clarke--“fighting Clarke,” he was called--and Duncan McDougall of the Athabasca, and that Alex. McKay, who had gone to the Pacific with Sir Alexander MacKenzie, and Donald MacKenzie, a relative of Sir Alexander’s, and the two Stuarts--David and Robert--kin of the Stuart who was with Simon Fraser on his trip to the sea. These Nor’Westers, who have joined Astor, know the mountain country well, and they have engaged old Nor’West voyageurs as servants. Half the partners are to go round the Horn to the Pacific, half overland from the Missouri to the Columbia. If the Nor’Westers are to capture the transmontane field first, there is not a moment to lose.