Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/251

Rh I mention the details of the career of David Thompson in the year 1811 because these facts are not yet familiar to the residents of our Columbia river region, because they are pertinent to our anniversary season, and because their narration serves to reveal to us the traits individual to the man. At the age of forty-one years David Thompson thus traversed every reach of this magnificent river from source to mouth, a physical achievement for a man even at the present day; but more than a mere physical achievement by him because his record gave first to the world its knowledge of the long sought for source and windings of this river, as a few years previous he had been the first to explore and mark one source of the mighty Mississippi River.

David Thompson was a "goer." If anything further is needed to indicate this let it be said that during the last days of April, 1810, he was at Pend d'Oreille Lake of Northern Idaho, and in July of the same year was at the Rainy Lakes near Lake Superior (and probably at Fort William) and on the 6th of September of the same year was again near the head waters of the Saskatchewan preparing to cross the divide onto the Columbia to complete his journey to its mouth and establish the rights of the "Northwesters" on the entire river. He journeyed to the Rainy Lakes because he had an appointment to keep there with his partners, and he hurried back again because he had a duty to perform for his company and for his country. Those were not yet the days of fees to porters in Pullman cars or even of the Rocky Mountain stage coach, but time and distance yielded to the energy and endurance of such men as the fur traders.

David Thompson was possessed of great physical courage and ability to lead men. You or I would hesitate to cross the Rocky Mountains on foot after the winter begins, but let me quote from "The Journals of Alex,