244 T. C. ELLIOTT
Kootenay of a later date and different location. Nor are we to forget that on the waters of the Fraser River Basin trading posts had been established in the year 1806 by Simon Fraser and his partners.
In this romantic locality David Thompson spent the fall, winter and spring of 1807-8 in company with his clerk, Finan McDonald, and six servants. He put out his thermometer and set down the first record of the weather in interior British Columbia. With other scientific instruments he determined the latitude and longitude of the House and of the lakes. He bestowed the name upon Mt. Nelson (now locally known as Mt. Hammond), which looms up so grandly to the westward of Lake Windermere, and determined its altitude. He found bands of wild horses roaming over the hills and caught some of them; he observed and made record of the habits of the salmon spawning in the river. He gathered in trade one hun- dred skins of the wild mountain goat, which brought a guinea apiece in the London market. He was besieged for some weeks by a band of Piegan Indians who crossed the Rocky Moun- tains with instructions to kill him, because the prairie Indians did not wish to have the Kootenaes supplied with firearms, powder and ball. In March, 1808, Mr. James McMillan visited him from Rocky Mt. House, on the Saskatchewan, with dog teams and sleds, bringing more trading goods and carrying back as many packs of furs. His trade was with the Kootenaes of the vicinity, and from as far south as Northwestern Mon- tana, of the United States. In April, 1808, he made an explor- ing trip down the Kootenay River as far as Kootenay Lake, and in June recrossed the Rocky Mountains with his furs and carried them to Rainy Lake House before again returning to Kootenae House for another winter. The government of British Columbia could well afford to permanently mark the site of Kootenae House in honor of this remarkable trader, astronomer and pathfinder.
At the beginning of the second winter at Kootenae House, Mr. Thompson felt sufficiently acquainted with the country and the Indians to begin to push the trade further to the south.
