The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery. Travers Twiss
however, of the natives, combined with the difficulty of procuring supplies, obliged Mr. Henry to abandon it in 1810. The Pacific Fur Company was formed about this time at New-York, with the object of monopolising, if possible, the commerce in furs between China and the north-west coast of America. The head of this association was John Jacob Astor, a native of Heidelberg, who had emigrated to the United States, and had there amassed very considerable wealth by extensive speculations in the fur trade. He had already obtained a charter from the Legislature of New-York in 1809, incorporating a company, under the name of the American Fur Company, to compete with the Mackinaw Company of Canada, within the Atlantic States, of which he was himself the real representative, according to his biographer, Mr. Washington Irving, his board of directors being merely a nominal body. In a similar manner, Mr. Astor himself writes to Mr. Adams in 1823, (Letter from J. J. Astor, of New-York, to the Hon. J. Q. Adams, Secretary of State of the United States, amongst the proofs and illustrations in the appendix to Mr. Greenhow’s work,) “You will observe that the name of the Pacific Fur Company is made use of at the commencement of the arrangements for this undertaking. I preferred to have it appear as the business of a company rather than of an individual, and several of the gentlemen engaged, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Crooks, Mr. M’Kay, M’Dougal, Stuart, &c., were in effect to be interested as partners in the undertaking, so far as respected the profit which might arise, but the means were furnished by me, and the property was solely mine, and I sustained the loss.” Mr. Astor engaged, on this understanding, nine partners in his scheme, of whom six were Scotchmen, who had all been in the service of the North-west Company, and three were citizens of the United States. He himself had become naturalised in the United States, but of his Scotch partners the three at least who first joined him seem to have had no intention of laying aside their national character, as, previously to signing, in 1810, the articles of agreement with Mr. Astor, they obtained from Mr. Jackson, the British Minister at Washington, an assurance that “in case of a war between the two nations, they would be respected as British subjects and merchants.”
Mr. Astor, having at last arranged his plans, despatched in September, 1810, four of his partners, with twenty-seven subordinate officers and servants, all British subjects, in the ship Tonquin, commanded by Jonathan Thorne, a lieutenant in the United States navy, to establish a settlement at the mouth of the Columbia river. They arrived at their destination in March, 1811, and erected in a short time a factory or fort on the south side of the river, about ten miles from the mouth, to which the name of Astoria was given. The Tonquin proceeded in June on a trading voyage to the northward, and was destroyed with her crew by the Indians in the Bay of Clyoquot, near the entrance of the Strait of Fuca.
In the following month of July, Mr. Thomson, the agent of the North-west Company, to whom allusion has already been made, descended the northern branch of the Columbia, and visited the settlement at the mouth of the Columbia. He was received with friendly hospitality by his old companion, Mr. M’Dougal, who was the superintendent, and shortly took his departure again, Mr. Stuart, one of the partners, accompanying him up the river as far as its junction with the Okinagan, where he remained during the winter, collecting furs from the natives. The factory at Astoria, in the mean time, was reinforced in January, 1812, by a further detachment of persons in the service of the Pacific Fur Company, who had set out overland early in 1811, and after suffering extreme hardships, and losing several of their number, at last made their way, in separate parties, to the mouth of the Columbia. A third detachment was brought by the ship Beaver, in the following May. All the partners of the Company, exclusive of Mr. Astor, had now been despatched to the scene of their future trading operations. Mr. Mackay, who had accompanied Mackenzie in his expedition to the Pacific in 1793, was alone wanting to their number: he had unfortunately proceeded northwards with Captain Thorne, in order to make arrangements with the Russians, and was involved in the common fate of the crew of the Tonquin.
The circumstances, however, of this establishment underwent a great change upon the declaration of war by the United States against Great Britain in June, 1812. Tidings of this event reached the factory in January, 1813. In the mean time Mr. Hunt, the chief agent of the Company, had sailed from Astoria, in the ship Beaver, in August, 1812, to make arrangements for the trade along the northern coast; whilst Mr. M’Dougal, the senior partner, with Mr. Mackenzie and others, superintended the factory. They were soon informed of the success of the British arms, and of the blockade of the ports of the United States, by Messrs. M’Tavish and Laroque, partners of the North-west Company, who visited Astoria early in 1813, with a small detachment of persons in the employment of that company, and opened negotiations with M’Dougal and Mackenzie for the dissolution of the Pacific Fur Company, and the abandonment of the establishment at Astoria. The association was in consequence formally dissolved in July, 1813; and on the 16th of October following, an agreement was executed between Messrs. M’Tavish and John Stuart, on the part of the North-west Company, and Messrs. M’Dougal, Mackenzie, David Stuart, and Clarke, on the part of the Pacific Fur Company, by which all the establishments, furs, and stock in hand of the late Pacific Fur Company were transferred to the North-west Company, at a given valuation, which produced, according to Mr. Greenhow, a sum total of 58,000 dollars. It may be observed, that four partners only of the Pacific Fur Company appear to have been parties to this agreement; but they constituted the entire body which remained at Astoria, Mr. Hunt, being absent, as already stated, and Messrs Crooks, Maclellan, and R. Stuart, having returned over-land to New-York in the spring of 1813.
The bargain had hardly been concluded when the British sloop of war, the Racoon, under the command of Capt. Black, entered the Columbia river, with the express purpose of destroying the settlement at Astoria; but the establishment had previously become the property of the North-west Company, and was in the hands of their agents. All that remained for Captain Black to perform, was to hoist the British ensign over the factory, the name of which he changed to Fort George.
Mr. M’Dougal and the majority of the persons who had been employed by the Pacific Fur Company, passed into the service of the North-west Company; and the agents of the latter body, with the aid of supplies from England, which arrived in 1814, were enabled to extend the field of their operations, and to establish themselves firmly in the country, undisturbed by any rivals.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH-WEST COAST OF AMERICA.
Voyage of Francisco de Ulloa, in 1539.—Cabrillo, in 1542.—Drake, in 1577–80.—The Famous Voyage.—The World Encompassed.—Nuño da Silva.—Edward Cliffe.—Francis Pretty, not the Author of the Famous Voyage.—Fleurieu.—Pretty the Author of the Voyage of Cavendish.—Purchas’ Pilgrims.—Notes of Fletcher.—World Encompassed, published in 1628.—Mr. Greenhow’s Mistake in respect to the World Encompassed and the Famous Voyage.—Agreement between the World Encompassed and the Narrative of Da Silva.—Fletcher’s Manuscript in the Sloane Collection of the British Museum.—Furthest Limit southward of Drake’s Voyage.—Northern Limit 43° and upwards by the Famous Voyage, 48° by the World Encompassed.—The latter confirmed by Stow, the Annalist, in 1592, and by John Davis, the Navigator, in 1595, and by Sir W. Monson in his Naval Tracts.—Camden’s Life of Elizabeth.—Dr. Johnson’s Life of Sir F. Drake.—Fleurieu’s Introduction to Marchand’s Voyage.—Introduction to the Voyage of Galiano and Valdés.—Alexander von Humboldt’s New Spain.
The Spaniards justly lay claim to the discovery of a considerable portion of the north-west coast of America. An expedition from Acapulco under Francisco de Ulloa, in 1539, first determined California to be a peninsula, by exploring the Gulf of California from La Paz to its northern extremity. The chart, which Domingo del Castillo, the pilot of Ulloa, drew up as the result of this voyage, differs very slightly, according to Alexander von Humboldt, from those of the present day. Ulloa subsequently explored the western coast of California. Of the extent of his discoveries on this occasion there are contradictory accounts, but the extreme limit assigned to them does not reach further north than Cape Engaño, in 30° north latitude.
In the spring of the following year, 1542, two vessels were despatched under Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo from the port of Navidad. He examined