nai rivers, and another in the She Whaps region. A third venture was to be made on Snake River, while the trade at Okanogan was to be continued.^ The Spokane project was in charge of Mr. Clark, David Stuart went back to Okanogan, and Mr. Donald M'Kenzie was sent up Snake River. Both Clark and Stuart, with their clerks and assistants at the branch stations, succeeded admirably in the trade of this second winter. M'Kenzie did nothing on the Snake, and by the middle of January was back at Astoria, with an alarming story which foreshadowed coming events.
War news crosses the Rockies. While visiting Spokane House about the close of the year 1812, so M'Kenzie told the people at Astoria, Mr. John George M'Tavish, partner of the Northwest Company, had arrived fresh from ]\Iontreal, with news that war had broken out between the United States and Great Britain, and that the company was expecting an English warship to enter the Pacific and capture Astoria. At this time the fort was in charge of Donald M'Dougal, a Canadian like M'Kenzie, Hunt having sailed away the preceding summer in the Beaver, and being still absent. These two men weakly determined to abandon the Columbia the following summer and cross the mountains; but the other partners when they came down with their
1 At the same time Mr. Robert Stuart was sent east with letters for Mr. Astor. His party became bewildered in the upper Snake River country, and were forced to winter on the plains, reaching St. Louis April 30, 1813, after being out nearly a year from Astoria.
