The Russian officer shrugs his shoulders and mutters some politeness through his beard. The Englishmen visit the Russian fort. Very polite are the Russians but very deficient in English speech when Ogden blusters about treaty rights.
“The thing can be arbitrated. We’ll go on up the river anyway,” protests the Britisher with that bull-dog persistence of getting his teeth in and hanging on, which characterized his Company. Then the Russians suddenly find their English.
“If you do, we’ll fire.”
Word is sent to Baron Wrangel of Sitka, but Baron Wrangel is opportunely absent. For ten days, they jangle, these rival traders. Then Peter Skene retires from the coast to be appointed Chief Factor of New Caledonia.
But the matter is not permitted to end here. In 1838, McLoughlin visits England. The case is laid before the Board of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the Hudson’s Bay Company lays the case before the great British Government, and for those ten days’ delay and those violations of treaty rights and those damages to British dignity, a bill of £20,000 is presented to the Russian Government. It would be interesting to know how the items of that bill were made up. Deep is the craft of these gamesters of the wilderness. They probably never intended that the bill should be paid, but it acts as a lever for what they really do want; and they will generously waive all claims of compensation for damaged dignity if the Russians will lease to them a ten-mile shore strip at the rate of 2,000 land otter skins a year.
“Owning half a continent, what in thunder did they want with a ten-mile shore strip?” a British diplomat asked; but it takes more than a British diplomat to fathom the motives of a Hudson’s Bay Company man. The short strip was a mere bagatelle. The English Company wanted to get into trade relations with the Russians. For this purpose any wedge would do—any wedge but asking trade as a favor. The fine point was to put the other fellow at a disadvantage and make him sue for the privilege of granting the favor, which the Hudson’s Bay Company wanted.
Curious—you may search the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the time of Radisson to Simpson; the method is always the same; motives not only secret but deliberately hidden by every subterfuge and trick that craft could devise; a secret aim worked out by diplomatic cunning, so that the other party to the aim shall sue for the privilege of doing exactly what the Hudson’s Bay Company wants. Altogether, it is very funny; and altogether, marvelously clever; and with it all—don’t forget—was the noblesse oblige of the grand old gentlemen of the grand old school, who play patron to every good cause and would not rob man, woman, child, bird or beast of as much as a crumb. Where does it come from—that curious diplomacy of the Hudson’s Bay Company? Is it an inheritance of feudalism, of the mediæval court ways, when a prince made his subjects thankful to God for having their pockets picked by his dainty fingers? To Radisson, the Company owed its existence. Yet they made him glad to beg for a penny. The French won the bay fairly in open war. Yet the Company made France glad to give up all possessions by the simple trick of presenting claims of £200,000. And when negotiations opened with Canada for the surrender of the monopoly in the Northwest, by some legerdemain of diplomacy, Canadian statesmen were glad to pay millions in cash and millions in land for the relinquishment of a charter—which, from the Canadian point of view—the Company ought never to have been allowed to possess. The very year that Russian negotiations are in progress, Pelly, the English governor of the Company, and Simpson, the colonial governor, have both been knighted for their loyal care of British interests abroad.
Let us follow the diplomacy of the ten-mile strip. While diplomats are busy in England, Fort Simpson has been rebuilt on a better site by the same men of The Dryad repulsed at Stickine. At the mouth of the Skeena, the H. B. C. flag now flies above Port Essington (1835). Also on the Stickine inland from the Russian strip, Glenora and Mumford have been built.
Back came McLoughlin and the newly knighted Simpson from the Board Meeting in London. McLoughlin came by way of Canada. A special brigade is organized at Montreal to take possession of the leased ten-mile strip. Spring, 1840, James Douglas in command, assisted by Glen Rae, McLoughlin’s son-in-law, by John McLoughlin, Jr., and fifty others, the brigade leaves Fort Vancouver, ascends the Cowlitz River, portages overland to Puget Sound and at Nisqually boards the little steamer Beaver for the North. Pause is made at Langley on the Fraser just in time to see the embers of the burnt fort. Jimmie Yale is housed in tents with the savages howling around him ready to attack. Douglas lands his men and rebuilds Langley. Next stop at Fort Simpson, then up to the Russian redoubt on the Stickine, where fifty Russian soldiers are in charge. McLoughlin, Jr., drops off here with eighteen men to take over the fort.