Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/101



preparation for an early start in 1808, and explore the Fraser (their supposed Columbia) from Fort George to its mouth at the ocean.

Fraser made preparations in pursuance of his orders, and about the last days of May or the first days of June, 1808, set adrift in his canoes on the boisterous river with twenty-one men and four large canoes. Within a few hours after starting one of the canoes was wrecked and lost. Within three daj^s from start- ing Fraser had reached the point where Mackenzie had abandoned the river en- tirely, and struck across the country' on foot to reach the ocean. But Simon Fraser never wavered at any danger or difficulty. With perils, dangers and ob- stacles to overcome that Avould have paralyzed any ten thousand men standing upon a line, Fi-aser pursued the course of the wild river with a courage that would neither halt nor consider defeat. Time and again his men begged him to alter his course and leave the river, and the Indians repeatedly warned him that it was impossible to follow the river to the great sea. But the hero of the expedi- tion was inexorable ; he followed the river along its banks ; he borrowed canoes from the Indians and took to the river where it was possible ; he packed his goods and baggage around rapids, waterfalls and impassable canyons ; he hired horses and rode along the side of the seething waters ; and he followed the river until its troubled waters was lost in the boundless ocean by many mouths a few miles above where the British Columbia city of Vancouver now stands. Simon Fraser earned the honor of naming the second largest river emptying into the Paeifie ocean, and he proved to the British government that his river was not the Columbia river.

Without any apparent reason or excuse the authors of Bancroft's history of the Northwest has condemned Simon Fraser as "an illiterate, ill-bred, bickering, fault-finding man, of jealous disposition, ambitious, energetic, with considerable conscience, and in the main holding to honest intentions." However, these lit- erary carpet knights of San Francisco are to be both pitied and excused for their judgments of men and things. Never having seen anything worse than the lions on Seal Rock at their Golden Gate, or charged down upon a greater danger than a schooner of beer in the haunts of the Press Club, they knew noth- ing of the perils, dangers and courage of the heroic men and women who rescued the great Northwest from the barbarism and savagery of the wilderness, and set up therein great states with all the glories of attendant civilization.

As has been stated, Simon Fraser 's father, also named Simon Fraser, was a Tory in the American Revolutionary war ; joined the British army to fight the American rebels, was captured by the Americans, and died in prison. Young Fraser was taken by his mother to Montreal, Canada, and educated. At the age of sixteen he joined the Northwest Company as a hired man. His energy, industry and talents were soon noticed and appreciated, and his rise in the serv- ice of the company was rapid. He lived to the age of eighty-six years and died at St. Andrews, in Ontario Province. Canada.

ANDREW HENRY — 1808

The next man to make a plunge into the great western wilderness was An- drew Henry, who was born in Fayette county. Pennsylvania, came west to St. Louis in 1807. went into the employ of Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard, who was en-