Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/48

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40 T. G ELLIOTT

The Pathfinder; and those remarks afterward took printed form in the Oregon Historical Quarterly for September, 1911 (Vol. 12, No. 3). In that address, for the sake of local color, quotations were made from what purported to be a copy of a portion of the original journal of Mr. Thompson. Soon afterward Professor O. B. Sperlin, of the Stadium High School of Tacoma, a most enthusiastic and conscientious reader of the history of the Pacific Northwest, at his own expense obtained one of these same transcripts and in the Quarterly of the Washington University State Historical Society (Seat- tle) for January, 1913 (Vol. 4, No. 1), contributed an article containing excerpts from the same. On account of apparent contradictions in the text of these transcripts the writer of these notes then undertook, with the hearty consent of Mr. Sperlin, to have those fragmentary copies completed to cover the entire journey of David Thompson in 1811 from Kettle Falls to Astoria and return. This has been done and compari- son of the completed copy with the original manuscript in the archives department of the Province of Ontario, at Toronto, has been very kindly made by Mr. Tyrrell per- sonally, from which it appears that the former transcripts were evidently typewritten from dictation and contained both omissions and errors of the text. In the study of this journal use has been made of the "Report of An Examination of the Upper Columbia River in September and October, 1881," by Lieut. Thos. W. Symons, published as a government docu- ment (Washington, 1882). This report contains maps and tables of distances which render the journey of Mr. Thompson as far as the mouth of Snake river very intelligible. Below the Snake river charts and surveys in the office of the Chief Engineer of the Department of the Columbia have been con- sulted. Valuable assistance has been obtained from Mr. Jacob A. Meyers, a very careful reader of Columbiana, who has resided bear Kettle Falls for many years, and from W. C. Brown, Esq., of Okanogan.

In explanation of the distances recorded by Mr. Thompson it may be said that he used the marine and not the statute