Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/257

Rh well in finally placing the line of the Canadian boundary at the 49th parallel of North Latitude, and agree that the work of David Thompson gave a considerable degree of fairness to the British demand for that boundary to follow the line of the Columbia River south from the 49th parallel, which is the most Great Britain ever seriously claimed. And we of the Republic may well be thankful that those pesky Indians of the Saskatchewan in the early fall of 1810 hindered David Thompson from crossing the "height of land" and thus from coming down the Columbia that year and actually occupying the mouth of the Columbia in advance of the Astor party.

During the final stages of the negotiation for the settlement of the international boundary with Great Britain, between 1842 and 1846, David Thompson, then about seventy-five years old, wrote several letters to the officials of his government emphasizing the extent and value of this wonderful Columbia river country and relating the services he had performed here. These letters are now on file in the Public Records Office at London and they are the plea of an old and forgotten man for recognition; for in sorrow be it said the last years of his life were spent in poverty and at times in distress. His death occurred at Longueil, near Montreal, in the year 1857 during his eighty-seventh year. The families of the Merchants of Canada who had grown wealthy through the fur trade forgot him in his failing years, and the government had no time to listen to his story.

That other grand man of the Columbia, Doctor John McLoughlin, during that same year 1857, died at Oregon City, Oregon, under similar circumstances of distress of mind. The people he had befriended became forgetful and even sought to despoil him. But during these anniversary years these men are coming to their own in the memory of the generations of the present, and these two names, David Thompson and John McLoughlin, will be