There was nothing niggardly about this princely merchant's preparations, once he had made up his mind to embark in the adventure. Every thing was conceived on a most liberal scale, and nothing was left to chance. One company of agents, clerks, and laborers was sent round Cape Horn, with orders to begin a station at the Columbia River, should they first arrive on the ground. Another company, numbering sixty persons, either agents, trappers, guides, or interpreters, went from St. Louis up the Missouri and Yellowstone, and so across the great snowy range into the Columbia basin.
This was in 1810. The next year Mr. Astor despatched a second ship to the Columbia with further supplies of men and means.
The Tonquin, the pioneer ship, arrived in the Columbia before the overland party did. A site was chosen ten miles up the river, on the south side, and the work of erecting a trading-post begun at once, so that when the advance of the overland party reached it (January, 1812), in the utmost destitution, they found relief within its walls.
In honor of its projector the builders called their settlement Astoria. Its history was destined to be brief but eventful. In the first place, the rivalry of the British North-west Company soon made itself felt. Its agents spread themselves out over the upper Columbia waters, so intercepting the Indian trade. Then news was brought to the factory, of the taking of the Tonquin and massacre of her crew by the Indians, with whom she was trading, near the Straits of Fuca.
The ship Beaver, with the third detachment, arrived out in May, 1812. She, too, sailed on a trading-voyage up the coast. A party was sent out from Astoria, at this time, to establish a trading-post on the Spokane River, which, with one already begun at Okonagon, was the second this company had formed in the interior.
In June, 1812, war broke out between England and the United States. It was January before the people at Astoria heard of it. Finding themselves cut off from help on the one side, and threatened with capture on the other, Astor's agents sold the property to the North-west Company, into whose hands it thus passed, not without suspicion of collusion on the part of the sellers. This was in October, 1813.
In this way an enterprise which had been sagaciously planned, backed with abundant means, and had passed through the preliminary stage of trial to assured success, came to an inglorious end because the Government lacked means to protect it. And so Americans were ousted from Oregon, and Englishmen put in possession, which was much like giving the wolf the wether to keep.
LOUISIANA ADMITTED.
Louisiana came into the Union in 1812, so making it the eighteenth State in the order of succession, as it was the first formed of any portion of the territory we had acquired west of the Mississippi. Louisiana is therefore the corner-stone of the new Great West.
Louisiana came in at the beginning of a period of strife and bloodshed. England made a most desperate effort to seize New Orleans, with intent to obtain control of the Mississippi, or at least to gain a vantage-ground from which she could dictate terms to the United States. The fortune of war, however, went against her in the bloodiest battle of the time. Peace was already made when it was fought, so making the effort as useless as it was costly and heroic.