The Hakamaw Indians certainly deserved Fraser's grateful remembrance
for their able assistance throughout these alarming situations. The
descents were, if possible, still more difficult; in these places the
white men were under the necessity of trusting their property to the
Indians, even the precious guns were handed from one Indian to
another; yet they thought nothing of it, they went up and down these
wild places with the same agility as sailors do on a ship. After
escaping innumerable perils in the course of the day, the party
encamped about sunset, being supplied by the natives with plenty of
dried fish.
Thus the main lines of the exploration of the great Canadian Dominion
were completed. Alexander Mackenzie went to England in 1799 and
received a knighthood for his remarkable achievements. On his return
he first definitely created the New North-west or "X.Y." Company, and
then brought about its fusion (after several years of bitter rivalry)
with the old North-west Company; and it was this united and
strengthened organization which, between 1804 and 1819, sent out so
many bold pioneers to fill in the details of the map between the
Columbia and Missouri on the south, and the Great Slave Lake and Liard
River on the north. But during these years the energies of the
Hudson's Bay Company were reviving under a strange personality--THOMAS
DOUGLAS, EARL OF SELKIRK.
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