be the Columbia, and going up the Stuart branch built Fort St. James on Stuart Lake. During the winter and summer, after Lewis and Clark reached home, he built Fort Fraser on Fraser Lake, and Fort George upon the Fraser River, still thinking it was the Columbia.
"Now will I reach the mouth of this Columbia," said Fraser in the Spring of 1808, launching his boat, the Perseverance, upon the wildest water of the North.
"You cannot pass," said the Indians, and they waved and whirled their arms to indicate the mad tumultuous swirling of the waters.
"Whatever the obstacle," said Simon Fraser, "I shall follow this river to the end," and down he went for days and days through turbulent gulfs and whirlpools, past rocks and rapids and eddies, under frowning, overhanging precipices in the high water of May.
The Indians spoke of white people.
"It must be Lewis and Clark," groaned Fraser, redoubling his effort to win another empire for his king.
Daily, hourly, risking their lives, at every step in the Mountains the Indians said, "You can go no further."
But the sturdy Scotchmen gripped their oars and set their teeth, turning, doubling, twisting, shooting past rocky points that menaced death, portaging, lifting canoes by sheer grit and resolution up almost impassable rockways, over cliffs almost without a foothold and down into the wave again. So ran the Northwesters down the wild river to the sea, and camped near the present site of New Westminster. And lo! it was not the Columbia.
Back came Simon Fraser to Fort William on Lake Superior to report what he had done, and they crowned his brow with the name of his own great river, the Fraser.
Travellers look down the frowning Fraser gorge to-day, and little realise why Simon Fraser made that daring journey.
