CHAPTER VII

PETER POND AND HIS MAPS

HE meagre details of Peter Pond's life in the

THE

west from 1768 to 1775 have been given in the preceding chapter. He was left on his way down to Fort Dauphin, near the north-west angle of Dauphin Lake, where he spent the winter of 1775. Pond was one of the most singular of the many remarkable men engaged in the western fur trade, and incidentally in the exploration of the immense region that now constitutes Western Canada. Born at Milford, in the State of

1 This is on the authority of Dr. Kohl. Mr. P. Lee Phillips, Chief of the Division of Maps and Charts in the Library of Congress, says that 66 one Peter Pond, of whom it is stated no trace could be found, was born at Milford in 1741."

Since writing the above my attention has been called to an exceedingly interesting manuscript Journal of Peter Pond, discovered in Connecticut by the wife of Pond's great-grand-nephew some years ago, and now published for the first time in the Journal of American History. The Journal opens with this important statement: "I was born in Milford in the countey of New Haven in Conn the 18 day of Jany 1740 and lived there under the Government and protection of my parans til the year 56.” This fixes conclusively the date of Pond's birth. It is a matter of deep regret to me that I am unable to avail myself of the evidence doubtless afforded by this Journal as to the extent of Pond's western explorations. Unfortunately the portion already published carries Pond only to the upper waters of the Mississippi, and I have been unable to secure either from Mrs. Nathan, Gillet Pond, who edits the Journal, or from the editor of the Journal of American History, any particulars of the later portions of the Journal, which, so far as the field of north-western exploration is concerned, are the vital portions.

Connecticut, he came north into Canada very soon after the French colony passed into English hands, and identified himself with Alexander Henry, the Frobishers, and others who saw the possibilities of the western fur trade and had made up their minds to exploit it at all hazards. That the hazards were not imaginary the history of the fur trade bears ample evidence. Pond was in many ways admirably fitted for the arduous work of a trader in the wilderness, and it may also be said of him that he was, in a truer sense than many of his contemporaries, an explorer. The Frobishers and Henry looked upon exploration solely as a means to an end. First and always they were fur traders. They penetrated the unknown west, paddled over unexplored waterways, discovered portages that led them into new river systems, but all with an eye to the possibilities that each new field offered in the way of peltries. Pond, too, was a fur trader, but he seems to have been equally, or even more, a pathfinder. He was possessed by that Wanderlust that after all has been at the bottom of most of the world's exploration-the passion for discovering what may lie beyond the uttermost bounds of the known, that has carried men across untravelled seas to the shores of unknown lands, to the heart of great continents; and that neither arctic cold nor tropic heat could dampen. Pond lacked the finer courage, the resourcefulness, the steadfast purpose of an Alexander Mackenzie, and he therefore achieved comparatively little as an explorer, but that he did accomplish something, and enough to entitle him to a place in the history

of western exploration, will be seen from the following pages.

Pond having wintered at Fort Dauphin, set out in the spring of 1776 for the Saskatchewan, by way of Lake Winnipegosis, or Little Lake Winipique as he calls it on his map, and portaged from thence into what is now Cedar Lake, but which in Pond's day was known as Lake Bourbon. Here he passed the site of La Vérendrye's Fort Bourbon, long since fallen into decay, and ascended the Saskatchewan, which he says the natives called the Pasquia, to the forks, where he remained until the following spring. The year 1777 was spent in trading along the Saskatchewan, and Pond again wintered at the forks. In the spring of 1778 he descended the river to Sturgeon Lake, where a number of the traders had gathered to plan future operations.

As a good deal of misunderstanding has arisen owing to the fact that both the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company had forts on Cumberland Lake, a few words may not be out of place. The first trading establishment here was that made by Joseph Frobisher about 1772. In 1774 Hearne built Fort Cumberland for the Hudson's Bay Company. While the Canadian traders could therefore claim priority, it seems clear that Frobisher's house must have been a very temporary structure, for when the elder Henry reached Cumberland Lake on the 26th October, 1775, he makes no mention of Frobisher's post, but states explicitly that the house at which they stopped was Cumberland House of the Hudson's Bay Company. It