traveler to-day can see the trail along the side of the precipice like
basket work between Lilloet and Thompson River. In Fraser's day was no
{332} trail, only here and there bridges of trembling twig ladders
across chasms; and over these swinging footholds the marchers had to
carry their packs, the river rolling below, deep and ominous and
treacherous. At Spuzzum the river turned from the south straight west.
Fraser knew it was not the Columbia. His men named it after himself.
Forty days was Fraser going from St. George to tide water. Early in
August he was back at his fur posts of New Caledonia.

[Illustration: ASTORIA IN 1813]

Yet another explorer did the Nor'westers send to take possession of the
region beyond the mountains. David Thompson had been surveying the
bounds between the United States and what is now Manitoba, when he was
ordered to explore the Rockies in the region of the modern Banff. Up
on Canoe River, Thompson and his men build canoes to descend the
Columbia. Following the Big Bend, they go down the rolling milky tide
past Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes, a region of mountains sheer on each
side as walls, with wisps of mist marking the cloud line. Then a
circular sweep westward through what is now Washington, pausing at
Snake River to erect formal claim of possession for England, then a
riffle on the current, a {333} smell of the sea, and at 1 P.M. on July
15, 1811, Thompson glides within view of a little raw new fort,
Astoria. In the race to the Pacific the Americans have gained the
ground at the mouth of the Columbia just two months before Thompson
came. In Astor's fort Thompson finds old friends of the Northwest
Company hired over by Astor.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE WEST COAST, SHOWING THE OGDEN AND ROSS
EXPLORATIONS]

After war has broken out in open flame it is easy to ascribe the cause
to this, that, or the other act, which put the match to the
combustibles; but the real reason usually lies far behind the one act
of explosion, in an accumulation of ill feeling that provided the
combustibles.

So it was in the fratricidal war of 1812 between Canada and the United
States. The war was criminal folly, as useless as it was unnecessary.
What caused it? What accumulated the ill feeling lying ready like
combustibles for the match? Let us see.

The United Empire Loyalists have, by 1812, increased to some 100,000 of
Canada's population, cherishing bitter memories of ruin and
confisc