The Tonquin left New York on September 6, 1810. She carried a fine equipment of all things needed for founding the proposed emporium. She was manned by a crew of twenty-one and conveyed members of the fur-trading force to the number of thirty-three. Stopping at the Sandwich Islands, an added force of twenty-four natives was taken aboard. At various times on the journey the rigid ideas of naval discipline and the imperious temper of Captain Thorn came near producing mutiny among the partners and clerks. When the Tonquin hove to off the mouth of the Columbia on March 22, 1811, the eager voyagers saw little to attract. The wind was blowing in heavy squalls, and the sea ran high. Nevertheless the hard-hearted Captain issued orders to the first mate, Fox, with a boat’s crew of four men, to go into the foaming waves and sound the channel. The boat was insufficiently provided, and it seemed scarcely short of murder to despatch a crew under such circumstances. But the tyrannical captain would listen to no remonstrances, and the poor little boat went tossing over the billows on her forlorn hope. Such indeed it proved to be, for neither boat nor any one of the crew was ever heard of again. This was a wholly unnecessary sacrifice of life, for the Tonquin was in no danger, and time could just as well have been taken for more propitious weather.
The next day, the wind and sea having abated, the Tonquin drew near the dreaded bar, but, no entrance that satisfied the captain appearing, the ship again stood off to spend the night in deep water. On the next day, the 24th, the wind fell and a serene sky seemed to invite another attempt. The pinnace in command of Mr. Aikin, with two white men and two Kanakas, was sent out to find the channel. Following the pinnace the ship moved in so rapidly under a freshening breeze that she passed the pinnace, the unfortunate men on board finding it impossible to effect an entrance and being borne by the refluent current into the mad surge where ocean tide and outflowing river met in foamy strife. So the pinnace disappeared. But meanwhile the crew had all their energies engaged to save the Tonquin. For the wind failed at the critical moment and the ship struck the sands with violence. Night came on. Had the men been classically trained (as in fact Franchère was) they might have remembered Virgil, Ponto nox incubat atra. But they had no time for classical or other quotations. Hastily dropping the anchors they lay to in the midst of the tumult of waters, in that worst of situations, on an unknown coast in the dark and in storm. But as Franchère expresses it, Providence came to their succour, and the tide flooding and the wind rising, they weighed the anchors, and in spite of the obscurity of the night, they gained a safe harbour in a little cove inside of Cape Disappointment, apparently just about abreast of the present town of Ilwaco.
Thus the Tonquin was saved, and with the light of morning it could be seen that she was fairly within the bar. Natives soon made their appearance, desirous of trading beaver-skins. But the crew were in no mood for commerce while any hope existed for finding the lost sailors. Taking a course toward the shore by what must have been nearly the present route from Ilwaco to Long Beach, the captain and a party with him, began a search and soon found Weeks, one of the crew of the pinnace. He was stark naked and suffering intensely from the cold. As soon as sufficiently revived he narrated the loss of the pinnace in the breakers, the death of three of the crew, and the casting of himself and one of the Kanakas upon the beach. The point where they were cast would seem to have been near the present location of the life-saving station.
The two survivors of the ill-fated pinnace having been revived, the party returned to the Tonquin, which was now riding safely at anchor in the bay on the north side of the river, named Baker’s Bay by Broughton nineteen years before. Joy for their own escape from such imminent perils was mingled with melancholy at the loss of their eight companions of the two boats, and with the melancholy there was a sense of bitterness toward the captain, who was to blame, at least for the loss of the small boat.
But now the new land was all before them where to choose, and since Captain Thorn was in great haste to depart and begin his trading cruise along the coast, the partners on the Tonquin, Messrs. McKay, McDougal, David Stuart, and Robert Stuart, decided somewhat hurriedly to locate at the point which had received from Lieutenant Broughton the name of Point George. Franchère gives a pleasant picture of the beauty of the trees and sky, and the surprise of the party to find that, though it was only the 12th of April when they set to work upon the great trees which covered the site of their chosen capital, yet spring was already far advanced. They did not then understand the effect of the Japan current upon the Pacific Coast climate.
An incident of special interest soon after landing was the appearance on June 15th of two strange Indians, a man and a woman, bearing a letter addressed to Mr. John Stuart, Fort Estekatadene, New Caledonia. These two Indians wore long robes of dressed deerskins with leggings and moccasins more like the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. They could not understand the speech of the Astoria Indians nor of any of the mixture of dialects which the white men tried on them, until one of the Canadian clerks addressed them in the Knisteneaux language with which they seemed to be partially familiar. After several days of stay at the fort the two wandering Indians succeeded in making it clear to the traders that they had been sent out by a clerk named Finnan McDonald of the North-west Fur Company from a fort which that company had just established on the Spokane River. They said that they had lost their way and in consequence had descended the Tacousah-Tessah (and this Franchère understood to be the Indian name for the Columbia, though the general impression among the Indians is that Tacousah-Tessah, or Tacoutche-Tesse, signified Frazer River). From the revelation gradually drawn from these two Indians (and the surprising discovery was made that they were both women) the very important conclusion was drawn that the North-west Fur Company was already prepared to contest with the Astor Company the possession of the River. The peculiar feature of the situation was that the most of the Astorians, though American by the existing business tie, were Canadian and British by blood and sympathy, and hence were very likely to fraternise with the Montreal traders.
One of the Lagoons of the Upper Columbia River, near Golden, B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates, Golden.
Saddle Mt., or Swallalochost, near Astoria, Famous in Indian Myth.
Photo. by Woodfield.