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 great prairie, about one {169} hundred and fifty miles from the confluence of that river with the Columbia.[89] Mr. M'Kenzie and his party quitted us again on the 31st, to make known the resolutions recently adopted at Astoria, to the gentlemen who were wintering in the interior.

On the 11th of April two birch-bark canoes, bearing the British flag, arrived at the factory. They were commanded by Messrs. J. G. M'Tavish and Joseph Laroque, and manned by nineteen Canadian voyageurs.[90] They landed on a point of land under the guns of the fort, and formed their camp. We invited these gentlemen to our quarters and learned from them the object of their visit. They had come to await the arrival of the ship Isaac Todd, despatched from Canada by the Northwest Company, in October, 1811,