Thompson remained only a week. McDougall gave him what provisions were necessary for the return voyage, and July 22nd he set out to ascend the Columbia with a party of Astorians bound inland to trade. Bourland, his voyageur, wanted to stay at Astoria, so Thompson traded his services to McDougall for one of Astor’s Sandwich Island men. The Astor hunters struck up Okanogan River to trade. Thompson pushed on up the Columbia through the Arrow Lakes at feverish pace, noticing with disgust that the Hudson’s Bay man, Howse, was camping hard on his trail, forming trading connections with Sarcees and Piegans and Kootenays. Snow comes early in the mountains. Thompson must succeed in crossing the pass before winter sets in so that the report of what he learned at Astoria can be sent down to Fort William in time for the annual meeting of July, 1812. He pauses only for a night with Harmon and Henry at Rocky Mountain Pass and curses his stars at more delay caused by the Piegan raiders, who are keeping his men of the Big Bend at East Kootenay cooped up in fear of their lives, but he reaches Edmonton in three months, and is present at the annual meeting of the partners at Fort William in July, 1812. This is a fateful year. War is waged between the United States and Canada. True soldiers of fortune as the Nor’Westers ever were, they decided to take advantage of that war and capture Astoria. John George McTavish and Alexander Henry of Howse’s Pass, with Larocque of the Missouri, are to lead fifty voyageurs overland and down the Columbia to Astoria, there to camp outside the palisades and parley with Duncan McDougall. Old Donald McTavish, as gay an old reprobate as ever graced the fur trade, is to sail with McDonald of Garth, the Highlander of the Crooked Arm, from London on the Northwest ship, the _Isaac Todd_, under convoy of the man-of-war, _Raccoon_, to capture Astoria. Thompson has fulfilled his mission. Though he was late in reaching the mouth of the Columbia, he has played his fur trade tactics so skillfully that Astoria will fall to his Company’s hands. The story of John George McTavish’s voyage from Fort William, Lake Superior to Astoria, or of old Donald McTavish’s drunken revels round the world in the _Isaac Todd_, would fill a volume. John George McTavish and Larocque reached Astoria first, sweeping gaily down the rain-swollen flood of the Columbia on April 11th in two birch canoes, British flags flying at the prow, voyageurs singing, Indians agape on the shore in sheer amaze at these dare-devil fellows, who flitted back and forward thinking no more of crossing the continent than crossing a river. [Illustration: FRASER to Tide Water 1808 ]