The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company / Including that of the French Traders of North-Western Canada and of the North-West, XY, and Astor Fur Companies

by George Bryce

[CHAPTER XL.]

FROM OREGON TO VANCOUVER ISLAND.

Fort Vancouver on American soil—Chief Factor Douglas chooses a new site—Young McLoughlin killed—Liquor selling prohibited—Dealing with the Songhies—A Jesuit father—Fort Victoria—Finlayson's skill—Chinook jargon—The brothers Ermatinger—A fur-trading Junius—"Fifty-four, forty, or fight"—Oregon Treaty—Hudson's Bay Company indemnified—The waggon road—A colony established—First governor—Gold fever—British Columbia—Fort Simpson—Hudson's Bay Company in the interior—The forts—A group of worthies—Service to Britain—The coast become Canadian.

The Columbia River grew to be a source of wealth to the Hudson's Bay Company. Its farming facilities were great, and its products afforded a large store for supplying the Russian settlements of Alaska. But as on the Red River, so here the influx of agricultural settlers sounded a note of warning to the fur trader that his day was soon to pass away. With the purpose of securing the northern trade, Fort Langley had been built on the Fraser River. The arrival of Sir George Simpson on the coast on his journey round the world was the occasion of the Company taking a most important step in order to hold the trade of Alaska.

In the year following Sir George's visit, Chief Factor Douglas crossed Puget Sound and examined the southern extremity of Vancouver Island as to its suitability for the erection of a new fort to take the place in due time of Fort Vancouver. Douglas found an excellent site, close beside the splendid harbour of Esquimalt, and reported to the assembled council of chief factors and traders at Fort Vancouver that the advantages afforded by the site, especially that of its contiguity to the sea, would place the new fort, for all their purposes, in a much better position than Fort Vancouver. The enterprise was accordingly determined on for the next season.

A tragic incident took place at this time on the Pacific Coast, which tended to make the policy of expansion adopted appear to be a wise and reasonable one. This was the violent death of a young trader, the son of Chief Trader McLoughlin, at Fort Taku on the coast of Alaska, in the territory leased from the Russians by the Hudson's Bay Company. The murder was the result of a drunken dispute among the Indians, in which, accidentally, young McLoughlin had been shot.

Sir George Simpson had just returned to the fort from his visit to the Sandwich Islands, and was startled at seeing the Russian and British ships, with flags at half-mast, on account of the young trader's death. The Indians, on the arrival of the Governor, expressed the greatest penitence, but the stern Lycurgus could not be appeased, and this calamity, along with one of a similar kind, which had shortly before occurred on the Stikine River, led Sir George Simpson and the Russian Governor Etholin to come to an agreement to discontinue at once the sale of spirituous liquor in trading with the Indians. The Indians for a time resorted to every device, such as withholding their furs unless liquor was given them, but the traders were unyielding, and the trade on the coast became safer and more profitable on account of the disuse of strong drink.

The decision to build a new fort having been reached in the next spring, the moving spirit of the trade on the coast, James Douglas, with fifteen men, fully supplied with food and necessary implements, crossed in the Beaver from Nisqually, like another Eneas leaving his untenable city behind to build a new Troy elsewhere. On the next day, March 13th, the vessel came to anchor opposite the new site.

A graphic writer has given us the description of the beautiful spot: "The view landwards was enchanting. Before them lay a vast body of land, upon which no white man then stood. Not a human habitation was in sight; not a beast, scarcely a bird. Even the gentle murmur of the voiceless wood was drowned by the gentle beating of the surf upon the shore. There was something specially charming, bewitching in the place. Though wholly natural it did not seem so. It was not at all like pure art, but it was as though nature and art had combined to map out and make one of the most pleasing prospects in the world."

The visitor looking at the City of Victoria in British Columbia to-day will say that the description is in no way overdrawn. Not only is the site one of the most charming on the earth, but as the spectator turns about he is entranced with the view on the mainland, of Mount Olympia, so named by that doughty captain, John Meares, more than fifty years before the founding of this fort.