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PLACE OF RIVER IN NORTHWEST HISTORY 183

To carry out this idea a central post was established at Astoria as a supply point for the Pacific Coast trade, while Saint Louis or New Orleans would serve as a base of opera- tions at the other end of the line.

But Astor's great enterprise was short lived. The war of 1812 came, with its menaces. Disasters befell in relations with the Indians, and his competitor, the North-West Company stood ready to take over his affairs.

But the debt which the people of the Northwest owe to his British successors is quite as great as that which they would have owed to Astor himself had he continued in business.

The fur trader mapped out regular routes and at regular intervals located posts consisting of store, as well as block houses, all of which were surrounded by palisades. These palisades included about one hundred yards square and were made of logs sunk into the ground eighteen inches or two feet, and rising some fifteen or twenty feet above it. Watch towers were erected at opposite corners. In these were main- tained two to six guns, four to six pounders. Every one en- tering the gates was first examined by the keeper and only one at a time was admitted. Here was kept the merchandise needed by the trapper in his work as well as in trade with the Indians. Here were also stored the bales of furs until ready for shipment to some central point.

Some of the more noted of these forts were Fort Hall near Pocatello, Fort Boise near the mouth of that river, Fort Colville north of Spokane, Fort Walla Walla, now Wallula, and Fort Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany.

The fur traders were our nation's first great topographers. There is not a river, a creek or a branch which they did not ascend and descend repeatedly not a mountain, a range, a hogback or a hill which they did not cross not a pass which they did not find, a wilderness which they did not penetrate, or a desert which they did not cross.