Meanwhile, what had Simon Fraser accomplished in the North, while Thompson was exploring the South? Like Thompson, he, too, was ordered to the mountains in 1805. James McDougall, a Northwest clerk, had already followed MacKenzie’s footsteps up Peace River across the mountains to the Forks, when Simon Fraser came on the scene in the fall of 1805. If Nor’Westers are to pass this way to the Western hunting ground, first of all there must be a fort at the entrance to the Pass. Fraser knocks up a cluster of cabins, leaves two clerks and twelve voyageurs in charge and ascends the south fork--the Parsnip. This was the stream where MacKenzie had such tremendous difficulties. Fraser avoids these rapids by going up a western branch of the Parsnip to a little lake narrow and seventeen miles long, set like an emerald among the mountains. There on a point of land beside a purling brook, he built the first fur post west of the Rockies, which he named after the partner, Archibald Norman McLeod. To this day it stands exactly where and as Fraser built it. James McDougall and La Malice, a blackguard half-breed, are left at the fort. Fraser spent three months at the post in the pass, but McDougall goes westward from Fort McLeod to a magnificent lake surrounded by forests and mountains. This lake is the center of the Carrier Indians’ country. To an old Shaman or Medicine Man, McDougall presents a piece of red cloth, telling him white men will come to trade in the spring. Blazing initials on the trees, he takes possession of the country for the Northwest Company. Fraser, at Peace River Pass, has sent the furs East and been joined by the wintering partner, Archibald McGillivray, who has come to take charge, while Fraser explores.