Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/87

 EARLIEST TRAVELERS ON OREGON TRAIL 79 they would reveal him to have been a visitor to Great Salt Lake, the actual discoverer of which is still in doubt. In the fall of 1821 news was received at Fort Nez Perces that the name Northwest Company had passed out of legal existence and the trade been consolidated under that of the Hudson's Bay Company ; this marks the beginning of the, use of that powerful name on the waters of the middle and lower Columbia. This news rather disturbed conditions for the time and the command of the Snake Country expedition leaving in the Fall of 1822 was entrusted to Finan Macdonald, a clerk, but whose knowledge of the country of the upper Columbia basin could hardly have been excelled by anyone, for he had reached its waters with David Thompson in 1807-8 and had been west of the Rockies ever since. He it was who passed this way in the fall of 1822, but having ideas of his own as to a more direct route to and from the hunting grounds returned the following year across the mountains northward to the Bit- ter Root Valley and through the Flathead country to Spokane House. The career of Finan Macdonald is but little known and he is given only passing mention; his ideas of the better route were tried out during 1823-4 by Alex. Ross and the use of the trail from the Columbia to the Boise, by way of Powder river was again discontinued by large parties but undoubtedly used by detached trappers and couriers. During the organization of the Pacific Fur Company in 1809-10 an office was necessarily maintained in Montreal ; Don- ald Mackenzie was one of those especially active there in the selection of the voyagettrs for the overland party. Employed for a time in Mr. Astor's office was a young man whose father dignified the position of "J ust i ce of the Court of the King's Bench" at Montreal, the Honourable Isaac Ogden. This young man, the youngest of a large family of children and his father's favorite, tired of the study of law in comparison with the glamour of the fur trade ; and there is reason to suspect from traditional accounts that he was given to youthful activities not necessarily vicious which disturbed the serenity of mind of his mother and her activities in society. (See Bancroft's