NORTHERN INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

It does not fall within our province to describe here the
heated contentions, the bitter rivalries, the fights and the
brigandage which ensued between the opposing factions.
Suffice it to say that McTavish’s death, in 1805, removed
the main cause of the whole trouble, and the following year
the divided parties were reunited into one. What we are
concerned with is the territory traversed by the indomitable
Scotchman and its fate after it became known to the
traders.

The bitter struggle between the rival factions in the east
forced them to concentrate, instead of extending, their
energies, and the newly-discovered fields west of the Rocky
Mountains had to wait for the restoration of peace before
anything could be done for them. Four years after
Mackenzie’s voyage, in the course of 1797, a certain James
Finlay did, indeed, ascend that part of the Peace River
which now bears his name, after which he followed that
explorer’s route along the Parsnip almost to its. source;
but that was merely travelling, and it is safe to say that no
tangible benefit thereby accrued to the fur trade or the
Indians.

As for the older Hudson’s Bay Company, it was far too
conservative and too much devoid of initiative to have
dreamed of establishing itself in a distant country just
revealed to the world through the exertions of one of its
natural enemies. Nay, it was only reaching the middle of
the continent when Alexander Mackenzie was visiting the
Pacific Coast.?

1. The unaccountable ignorance ot the early history of British Columbia to
which we have referred in our Preface manifests itself in many ways. Will it
be believed that the author of the sketch of New Caledonia in the ‘‘ Diction-
ary of Well-known British Columbians,” an important work published at
Vancouver four years ago, honestly supposes that the Hudson’s Bay Company
had no precursors in the fur-trade within the limits of the Province? He does
not seem to have ever heard of the North-West Company !

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