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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