Kootenay river and
its branches through Idaho and Montana. Still no path had he found to
the sea. In 1810 he seems to have gone east for instructions from his
company. What the instructions were we may conjecture from subsequent
developments. Astor of New York, as we have seen, was busy launching
his fur traders for operations on the Pacific. Piegan warriors blocked
the passage into the Rockies by the North Saskatchewan; so Thompson in
the autumn of this year ascended the Athabaska. Winter came early.
The passes were filled with snow and beset by warriors. He failed to
get provisions down from Rocky Mountain House; and his men, cut off by
hostile savages from all help from outside posts, had literally to cut
and shovel their way through Athabaska Pass while subsisting on short
rations. The men built huts in the pass; some hunted, while others
made snow-shoes and sleighs. They were down to rations of dog-meat and
moccasins, and hardly knew whether to expect death at the hands of
raiding Piegans or from starvation. On New Year's Day of 1811, {107}
when the thermometer dropped to 24 deg. below zero, with a biting wind,
Thompson was packing four broken-down horses and two dogs over the pass
to the west side of the Great Divide. The mountains rose precipitously
on each side; but when the trail began dropping down westward, the
weather moderated, though the snow grew deeper; and in the third week
of January Thompson came on the baffling current of the Columbia. He
camped there for the remainder of the winter, near the entrance of the
Canoe River. Why he went up the Columbia in the spring, tracing it
back to its source, and thence south again into Idaho, instead of
rounding the bend and going down the river, we do not know. He was
evidently puzzled by the contrary directions in which the great river
seemed to flow. At all events, by a route which is not clearly known,
Thompson struck the Spokane river in June 1811, near the site of the
present city of Spokane; and following down the Spokane, he again found
the elusive Columbia and embarked on its waters. At the mouth of the
Snake River, on July 9, he erected a pole, on which he hoisted a flag
and attached a sheet of paper claiming possession of the country for
Great Britain and the North-West {108} Company. A month later, when
Astor's traders came up-stream from the mouth of the Columbia, they
were amazed to find a British flag 'waving triumphantly' at this spo