NORTHERN INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

the Parsnip River and which was soon to be called McLeod
Lake. Pushing still farther west, he had even reached a
lake some fifteen miles east of the present Fort St. James,
which, his guide having told him was within Carrier terri-
tory, has remained to this day known as Carrier Lake or
Lac Porteur.

In compliance with his orders, Fraser proceeded in the
autumn of the same year to a place on the Peace, imme-
diately east of the Rockies, where he established a post
under the name of Rocky Mountain Portage. There he
left fourteen men (two clerks and twelve servants), and went
up with six others as far as a tributary.of the Parsnip, the
Pack River, which Mackenzie had overlooked, and which
would have immensely lightened the difficulties of his
progress during the first half of his voyage. This stream
he entered and ascended until he came in view of a narrow
lake, seventeen miles long, which he named McLeod, in
honor of a friend in the service, Archibald Norman McLeod.

There, on a peninsula formed by a tributary (Long Lake
River) and its outlet, by latitude 55° Oo 2” north, he founded
the first permanent post ever erected within what we now
call British Columbia: This was to accommodate the trade
with the Sekanais Indians, and for a short time it even
served as a supply house for the forts later established
among the Carriers. It has existed to this day without a
year of interruption.

Leaving three men at the new post, he returned, in
November, to winter at the Rocky Mountain House with
his three remaining companions and the fourteen men he
had left there.

The three French Canadians now stationed at Fort

1. Or, at all events, west of the Rocky Mountains. In a “‘ History of B.C.,
adapted for the use of Schools,” O. H. Cogswell wrongly states (p. 34) that
Fort McLeod was established in 1806. Even Nicolay supposes that Fraser
did not cross the Rockies before that date (*‘ The Oregon Territory,” p. 98).

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