One of these ships arrives at Fort Vancouver in the spring of each year, laden with coarse woollens, cloths, baizes, and blankets; hardware and cutlery; cotton cloths, calicoes, and cotton handkerchiefs; tea, sugar, coffee and cocoa; rice, tobacco, soap, beads, guns, powder, lead, rum, wine, brandy, gin, and playing cards; boots, shoes, and ready-made clothing, &c.; also, every description of sea stores, canvas, cordage, paints, oils, chains and chain cables, anchors, &c. Having discharged these “supplies,” it takes a cargo of lumber to the Sandwich Islands, or of flour and goods to the Russians at Sitka or Kamskatka; returns in August; receives the furs collected at Fort Vancouver, and sails again for England.
The value of peltries annually collected in Oregon, by the Hudson Bay Comp., is about £140,000 in the London or New York market. The prime cost of the goods exchanged {259} for them is about £20,000. To this must be added the per centage of the officers as governors, factors, &c. the wages and food of about four hundred men, the expense of shipping to bring supplies of goods and take back the returns of furs, and two years’ interest on the investments. The Company made arrangements in 1839 with the Russians at Sitka and at other ports, about the sea of Kamskatka, to supply them with flour and goods at fixed prices. As they are now opening large farms on the Cowelitz, the Umpqua, and in other parts of the Territory, for the production of wheat for that market; and as they can afford to sell goods purchased in England under a contract of fifty years’ standing, 20 or 30 per cent cheaper than American merchants can, there seems a certainty that the Hudson’s Bay Company will engross the entire trade of the North Pacific, as it has that of Oregon.
Soon after the union of the North-West and Hudson’s Bay Companies, the British Parliament passed an act extending the jurisdiction of the Canadian courts over the territories occupied by these fur traders, whether it were “owned” or “claimed by Great Britain.” Under this act, certain {260} gentlemen of the fur company were appointed justices of the peace, and empowered to entertain prosecutions for minor offences, arrest and send to Canada criminals of a higher order, and try, render judgment, and grant execution in civil suits where the amount in issue should not exceed £200; and in case of non-payment, to imprison the debtor at their own forts, or in the jails of Canada.
It is thus shown that the trade, and the civil and criminal jurisdiction in Oregon are held by British subjects; that American citizens are deprived of their own commercial rights; that they are liable to be arrested on their own territory by officers of British courts, tried in the American domain by British judges, and imprisoned or hung according to the laws of the British empire, for acts done within the territorial limits of the Republic.
It has frequently been asked if Oregon will hereafter assume great importance as a thoroughfare between the States and China? The answer is as follows:
The Straits de Fuca, and arms of the sea to the eastward of it, furnish the only good harbours on the Oregon coast. Those in Puget’s Sound offer every requisite facility {261} for the most extensive commerce. Ships beat out and into the straits with any winds of the coast, and find in summer and winter fine anchorage at short intervals on both shores; and among the islands of the Sound, a safe harbour from the prevailing storms. From Puget’s Sound eastward, there is a possible route for a railroad to the navigable waters of the Missouri; flanked with an abundance of fuel and other necessary materials. Its length would be about six hundred miles. Whether it would answer the desired end, would depend very much upon the navigation of the Missouri.[80]
As, however, the principal weight and bulk of cargoes in the Chinese trade would belong to the homeward voyage, and as the lumber used in constructing proper boats on the upper Missouri would sell in Saint Louis for something like the cost of construction, it may perhaps be presumed that the trade between China and the States could be conducted through such an overland communication.
The first day of the winter months came with bright skies over the beautiful valleys of Oregon. Mounts Washington and Jefferson reared their vast pyramids of ice and {262} snow among the fresh green forests of the lower hills, and overlooked the Willamette, the lower Columbia, and the distant sea. The herds of California cattle were lowing on the meadows, and the flocks of sheep from the downs of England were scampering and bleating around their shepherds on the plain; and the plane of the carpenter, the adze of the cooper, the hammer of the tinman, and the anvil of the blacksmith within the pickets, were all awake when I arose to breakfast for the last time at Fort Vancouver.
The beauty of the day, and the busy hum of life around me, accorded well with the feelings of joy with which I made preparations to return to my family and home. And yet when I met at the table Dr. McLaughlin, Mr. Douglas, and others with whom I had passed many pleasant hours, and from whom I had received many kindnesses, a sense of sorrow mingled strongly with the delight which the occasion naturally inspired. I was to leave Vancouver for the Sandwich Islands, and see them no more. I confess that it has seldom been my lot to feel so deeply pained at parting with those whom I had known so little time. But it became me to hasten {263} my departure; for the ship had dropped down to the mouth of the river, and awaited the arrival of Mr. Simpson, one of the company’s clerks,[81] Mr. Johnson, an American from St. Louis, and myself. While we are making the lower mouth of the Willamette, the reader will perhaps be amused with the sketch of life at Fort Vancouver.
Fort Vancouver is, as has been already intimated, the depot at which are brought the furs collected west of the Rocky Mountains, and from which they are shipped to England; the place also at which all the goods for the trade are landed; and from which they are distributed to the various posts of that territory by vessels, bateaux, or pack animals, as the various routes permit. It was established by Governor Simpson, in 1824, as the great centre of all commercial operations in Oregon;[82] is situated in a beautiful plain on the north bank of the Columbia, ninety miles from the sea, in latitude 45½° north, and in longitude 122° west; and stands four hundred yards from the water side. The noble river before it is sixteen hundred and seventy yards wide, and from five to seven fathoms in depth; the whole surrounding country is covered with {264} forests of pine, cedar, and fir, &c., interspersed here and there with small open spots; all overlooked by the vast snowy pyramids of the President’s Range, thirty-five miles in the east.