learned what had happened, he warned the captain of Indian vengeance and urged him to leave the harbour. These warnings the captain scorned, welcoming back the Indians, and no doubt exulting to see that they had become almost servile.

One morning, when Thorn, and MacKay were yet asleep, a pirogue with twenty Indians approached the ship. The Indians were unarmed, and held up furs to trade. They were welcomed on deck. Another canoe glided near and another band mounted the ship's ladder. Soon the vessel was completely surrounded with canoes, the braves coming aboard with furs, the squaws laughing and chatting and rocking their crafts at the ship's side. This day the Indians were neither pertinacious nor impertinent in their trade. Matters went swimmingly till some of the Tonquin's crew noticed with alarm that all the Indians were taking knives and other weapons in exchange for their furs and that groups were casually stationing themselves at positions of wonderful advantage on the deck. MacKay and Thorn were quickly called.

This is probably what the Indians were awaiting.

MacKay grasped the fearful danger of the situation and again warned the captain. Again Thorn slighted the warning. But anchors were hoisted. The Indians thronged closer, as if in the confusion of hasty trade. Then the dour-headed Thorn understood. With a shout he ordered the decks cleared. His shout was answered by a counter-shout—the wild, shrill shriekings of the Indian war-cry! All the newly-bought weapons flashed in the morning sun. Lewis, the clerk, fell first, bending over a pile of goods, and rolled down the companion-way with a mortal stab in his back. MacKay was knocked from his seat on the taffrail by a war-club and pitched overboard to the canoes, where the squaws received him on their knives. Thorn had been roused so suddenly that he had no weapon but his pocket-knife. With this he was trying to fight his way to the firearms of the cabin, when he was driven, faint from loss of blood, to the wheel-house. A tomahawk clubbed down, and he, too, was pitched overboard to the knives of the squaws.

While the officers were falling on the quarter-deck, sailors and Sandwich Islanders were fighting to the death elsewhere. The seven men who had been sent up the ratlins to rig sails came shinning down ropes and masts to gain the cabin. Two were instantly killed. A third fell down the main hatch fatally wounded; and the other four got into the cabin, where they broke holes and let fly with musket and rifle. This sent the savages scattering overboard to the waiting canoes. The survivors then fired charge after charge from the deck cannon, which drove the Indians to land with tremendous loss of life.

All day the Indians watched the Tonquin's sails flapping to the wind; but none of the ship's crew appeared on the deck. The next morning the Tonquin still lay rocking to the tide; but no white men emerged from below. Eager to plunder the apparently deserted ship, the Indians launched their canoes and cautiously paddled near. A white man—one of those who had fallen down the hatch wounded—staggered up to the deck, waved for the natives to come on board, and dropped below. Gluttonous of booty, the savages beset the sides of the Tonquin like flocks of carrion-birds. Barely were they on deck when sea and air were rent with a terrific explosion as of ten thousand cannon! The ship was blown to atoms, bodies torn asunder, and the sea scattered with bloody remnants of what had been living men but a moment before.

The mortally wounded man, thought to be Lewis, the clerk,[15] had determined to effect the death of his enemies on his own pyre. Unable to escape with the other four refugees under cover of night, he had put a match to four tons of powder in the hold. But the refugees might better have perished with the Tonquin; for head-winds drove them ashore, where they were captured and tortured to death with all the prolonged cruelty that savages practise. Between twenty and thirty lives were lost in this disaster to the Pacific Fur Company; and MacDougall was left at Astoria with but a handful of men and a weakly-built fort to wait the coming of the overland traders whom Mr. Astor was sending by way of the Missouri and Columbia.

Indian runners brought vague rumours of thirty white men building a fort on the Upper Columbia. If these had been the overland party, they would have come on to Astoria. Who they were, MacDougall, who had himself been a Nor' Wester, could easily guess. As a countercheck, Stuart of Labrador was preparing to go up-stream and build a fur post for the Pacific Company; but Astoria was suddenly electrified by the apparition of nine white men in a canoe flying a British flag.

The North-West Company arrived just three months too late!

David Thompson, the partner at the head of the newcomers, had been delayed in the mountains by the desertion of his guides. Much to the disgust of Labrador Stuart, who might change masters often but was loyal to only one master at a time, MacDougall and Thompson hailed each other as old friends. Every respect is due Mr. Thompson as an explorer, but to the Astorians living under the ruthless code of fur-trading rivalry, he should have been nothing more than a North-West spy, to be guardedly received in a Pacific Company fort. As a matter of fact, he was welcomed with open arms, saw everything, and set out again with a supply of Astoria provisions.

History is not permitted to jump at conclusions, but unanswered questions will always cling round Thompson's visit. Did he bear some message from the Nor' Westers to MacDougall? Why was Stuart, an honourable, fair-minded man, in such high dudgeon that he shook free of Thompson's company on their way back up the Columbia? Why did MacDougall lose his tone of courage with such surprising swiftness? How could the next party of Nor' Westers take him back into the fold and grant him a partnership ostensibly without the knowledge of the North-West annual council, held in Fort William on Lake Superior?

Early in August wandering tribes brought news of the Tonquin's destruction, and Astoria bestirred itself to strengthen pickets, erect bastions, mount four-pounders, and drill for war. MacDougall's North-West training now came out, and he entered on a policy of conciliation with the Indians that culminated in his marrying Comcomly's daughter. He also perpetrated the world-famous threat of letting small-pox out of a bottle exhibited to the chiefs unless they maintained good behaviour. Traders established inland posts, the schooner Dolly was built, and New Year's Day of 1812 ushered in with a firing of cannon and festive allowance of rum. On January 18th arrived the forerunners of the overland party, ragged, wasted, starving, with a tale of blundering and mismanagement that must have been gall to MacKenzie, the old Nor' Wester accompanying them. The main body under Hunt reached Astoria in February, and two other detachments later.

The management of the overlanders had been intrusted to Wilson Price Hunt of New Jersey, who at once proceeded to Montreal with Donald MacKenzie, the Nor' Wester. Here the fine hand of the North-West Company was first felt. Rum, threats, promises, and sudden orders whisking them away prevented capable voyageurs from enlisting under the Pacific Company. Only worthless fellows could be engaged, which explains in part why these empty braggarts so often failed Mr. Hunt. Pushing up the Ottawa in a birch canoe, Hunt and MacKenzie crossed the lake to Michilimackinac.

Here the hand of the North-West