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40 he went on a cruise with Sir John Ross to the Arctic regions, in search of a north-west passage. The vessel was wrecked, and nearly all on board were lost. Among those who escaped and were picked up by the Eskimos was young Barclay. He was taken to the island of Fisco, where he lived with the Danes for several months, finally returning to Scotland on a vessel which touched at the island. Resuming his studies, he graduated at the royal college of surgeons, in London, in July 1838, and left the following year for Oregon, where he arrived in the spring of 1840.

Donald Manson was also a native of Scotland, who had received a good education, and in his seventeenth year, 1817, entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He remained on the east side of the mountains till 1823, when he accompanied Black into the country now known as the Cassiar mining district, after which he returned to Athabasca, and in the autumn of 1824 was ordered to the Columbia River, arriving at Fort Vancouver in April 1825. In the summer of 1827 he assisted in the erection of Fort Langley, the first trading post established by the company west of the Rocky Mountains and north of Fort Vancouver. He returned to Fort Vancouver in 1828, in which year two American vessels, the brig Owyhee, Captain Dominus, and the schooner Convoy, Captain Tomson, entered the Columbia to trade. Manson was sent to occupy the deserted post at Astoria, and oppose the interlopers. He found the old fort in so ruinous a state that he lived in a tent for the season.