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party, under David Stuart, one of Astor's partners, now set out up the river, accompanied as far as the Cascades by Thompson on his return. When Stuart's party reached the place where the Columbia and Snake rivers meet they found a pole stuck in the ground, and tightly bound around it a sheet of paper containing the proclamation: "Know hereby that this country is claimed by Great Britain as part of its territories, that the Northwest Company of Merchants from Canada, finding the Factory for this people inconvenient for them, do hereby intend to erect a factory in this place for the convenience of the country around. D. Thompson." Notwithstanding this announcement, or possibly because of it, Stuart passed right on up the north branch to Okanogan River, where he established the first up-river fort for the Astor Company, and carried on a successful winter's trade. ^

Expansion of trade in 181 2. When the Beaver arrived in 1 81 2, with men and supplies, the Astorians decided on a great forward movement to the interior. They proposed to go into the neighbourhood of every Northwest post and begin a rival establishment. Thus they planned a fort on the Spokane, with branch trading houses on the Flathead (Clark's Fork) and Koote 1 Alexander Ross, one of the clerks, who spent most of the winter alone at Okanogan, while Stuart was exploring far to the north in the She Whaps country, tells us in his book, "The Fur Hunters of the Far West," that he bought fifteen hundred beaver, worth in Canton twenty-five hundred pounds, for goods worth, not to exceed thirty-five pounds. This he calls a "specimen of our trade among the Indians."