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 THE MAKERS OF CANADA 
 
 VOL. XX 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 

THE MAKERS OF CANADA 
 
 SIR JAMES 
 DOUGLAS 
 
 ROBERT HAMILTON COATS 
 
 AND 
 
 R. E. GOSNELL 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 MORANG & CO., LIMITED 
 
 1909 
 
 BOSTOK COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada in 
 the year 1908 by Morang & Co., Limited, in the 
 Department of Agriculture. 
 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NORTH-WEST COAST 
 
 Page 
 
 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TRAVELLER OVERLAND 
 
 49 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NEW CALEDONIA 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FORT VANCOUVER . 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE OREGON BOUNDARY 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 VICTORIA . 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 VANCOUVER ISLAND 
 
 87 
 
 113 
 
 147 
 
 175 
 
 207 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE TWO COLONIES 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONFEDERATION 
 
 INDEX 
 
 231 
 
 303 
 
 357 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NORTH-WEST COAST 
 
 B RITISH Columbia, as we know it to-day, 
 has had an organic existence only since the 
 year 1859, or, at the earliest, if we include the 
 colony of Vancouver Island, since 1849. Its his- 
 tory, therefore, as Crown colony and province of 
 the Dominion of Canada, is contemporary with the 
 lives of many still living. In a previous era, how- 
 ever, the region had bulked large in the annals of 
 the fur trade ; and in a period still more remote it 
 was a part of the romantic story of the conquest of 
 the Pacific. If, therefore, we would penetrate be- 
 yond results to ultimate causes, to see the com- 
 munity in its making and the material which the 
 most active of its makers found to his hand, as well 
 as the development which sprang from that begin- 
 ning, we should find that the inquiry, notwith- 
 standing the remoteness of the region from the 
 political life of the continent with which we are 
 most familiar, and the recent date at which its 
 organization was effected, leads far into the past. 
 We must begin, indeed, if we would trace the 
 stream of western history to its source, with a 
 time almost coeval with the earliest European 
 knowledge of America and but little subsequent 
 to the landing of Columbus on its eastern shores. 
 
 1 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 The fact that the progress of colonization on this 
 continent received a very remarkable impetus 
 from the western side, has not always been given 
 emphasis. Three causes have been commonly 
 assigned for the early spread of civilization in 
 America. The original discovery of the continent 
 came as a result of that spirit of adventure, born 
 of the Renaissance, which, coupling itself with the 
 demand of the trader for a short route to the 
 Orient, sent navigators into every sea. Two cen- 
 turies before Columbus, Marco Polo and his follow- 
 ing of mediaeval travellers had fired the imagina- 
 tion of the age with the glories of Cathay. The 
 dream that a path to these might lie by the west- 
 ern ocean, or, when the barrier of two continents 
 stretched itself in the way, by the rivers and 
 mountain passes of the new land (or, it might be, 
 by some “Strait of Anian” in the sea itself), was 
 ever before the eyes of that daring race of sailors 
 and discoverers who traced the coasts and pene- 
 trated the pathless wildernesses of the New World. 
 The second compelling force manifested itself later, 
 when to the religious zeal of Europe, still seething 
 from the Reformation, came the knowledge that 
 America had a native population sunken in sav- 
 agery and spiritual darkness. This operated in two 
 directions: the heathen brought the missionary, 
 most dauntless of martyrs; on the other hand, 
 those who in an age of relentless persecutions 
 looked with longing eyes for a land of freedom, 
 2 
 
COLONIZATION FROM THE WEST 
 
 found suddenly a whole continent open to them 
 where opposing bigotries were unknown. Of such 
 were the Jesuit Fathers and the Puritans of New 
 England. “If Columbus discovered the new con- 
 tinent, ’’ says Mr. Gold win Smith, “the Puritans 
 discovered the New World.” But a third factor, 
 
 . strong as these, was the lust of gain. To the 
 covetous eyes of the Spaniard, mighty on sea 
 and land, who had already forced his way by 
 Cape Horn to the Pacific, stood revealed the 
 wonderful riches of Mexico and Peru. These 
 hapless countries he overran with fire and sword, 
 plundered them of their gold, and trampled their 
 ancient and remarkable civilizations into the dust. 
 The return of the Spanish galleons laden with 
 treasure set Europe on fire. Of all the influences 
 that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 turned the eyes of the adventurer towards America, 
 greed was undoubtedly the most powerful. It is of 
 special import to the present purpose because of 
 the far-reaching part it played in the development 
 of enterprise on the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 It is not the intention here to outline the his- 
 tory of the entire Pacific coast of America, but to 
 trace briefly the more important events which led 
 to the discovery of the north-west portion of it 
 and to the ultimate domination of British interests 
 therein. And here, across the path of the story at 
 its outset, falls, and for two centuries abides, the 
 mighty shadow of Spain. It was fortunate for the 
 
 3 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 establishment of British influence in North Amer- 
 ica and especially on the western shores of the con- 
 tinent, that a people so powerful as the Spaniards 
 in the sixteenth century did not possess the genius 
 for colonization. Impetuous and daring the Span- 
 ish spirit was ; but the greed and cruelty ingrained 
 in its very fibre cast a blight on whatever it 
 touched and left no other monument than endur- 
 ing hate. Such power could not finally prevail. 
 War and spoliation led the Spaniards, at various 
 times, far northward from their base in Mexico; 
 but the vast Pacific slope, so full of latent pos- 
 sibilities, remained, for as long as their influence 
 overshadowed it, unvisited and unknown. 
 
 The early operations of Spain in the Pacific, 
 however, are of importance as the first of a series 
 of events which have had an immediate influence 
 upon present conditions in the northern and west- 
 ern portions of America. Other contributing agen- 
 cies from the side of the Pacific were the Russian 
 occupation of Alaska and the establishment of Brit- 
 ish trade interests by sea on the north-west coast. 
 Intermingled with these were the later activities 
 of the overland traders and discoverers of the 
 North-West Company, the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany and the Astorians, who fought their way 
 through the mountains to the Pacific under the 
 flags of their nations. It will be of interest to note 
 from the earliest point how these several influences 
 arose and entered into combination. 
 
 4 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC 
 
 Balboa was the first white man to see the Paci- 
 fic — marching his men mid-deep into its surf and 
 proclaiming the sovereignty of Spain over its 
 mighty waters, “for all time, past, present, or to 
 
 come, without contradiction north and 
 
 south, from the Pole Arctic to the Pole 
 
 Antarctic.” Mexico, the ancient seat of the Tol- 
 tecs and Aztecs, was discovered five years later, 
 in 1518. In 1519, it was conquered by Cortez, and 
 the civilization of Montezuma was overthrown. 
 Magellan, a Portuguese, who had joined the ser- 
 vice of Spain under Charles V, had previously 
 completed his memorable voyage around the 
 world, sailing through the straits of his name to 
 the Philippine Islands, where he lost his life. This 
 opened the way to the Orient by the Southern 
 Ocean. Vanschouten and Lemaire, two Dutch 
 navigators, subsequently doubled Cape Horn, pas- 
 sing in 1516 outside of the course held by Magel- 
 lan. These and other voyages, while they threw 
 light on one of the vexed problems of the day, 
 disappointed anticipations both as to the nearness 
 of Asia and the nature of the passage. They led, 
 however, to greater zeal in the prosecution of dis- 
 covery on the continent of America itself, in 
 which, especially in southern latitudes, Spain was 
 the leader and, at first, almost alone. There fol- 
 lowed the conquest of Peru by Pizarro in 1532 and 
 1533, when the rule of the Incas, more enlightened 
 in many respects than that of Spain herself, was 
 
 5 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 overwhelmed. This epoch of blood has been made 
 a household tale by Prescott: it is referred to here 
 only in connection with the immediate result it 
 had of further whetting the appetite of the Span- 
 iards for plunder, in pursuance of which they be- 
 gan, soon after, a series of excursions northward. 
 
 One of the earliest of these expeditions was 
 made, under the direction of Cortez, in 1528, by 
 Pedro Nunez Maldonado, who surveyed the coast 
 for one hundred leagues, as far as the river San- 
 tiago. Another was despatched in 1532, under the 
 command of Mendoza, who penetrated to the 27th 
 parallel of north latitude. A third set out a year 
 later, consisting of two ships commanded by Gri- 
 jalva and Becerra, the former of whom discovered 
 the Revillagigedo Islands, while the latter reached 
 the 23rd parallel. Nuno de Guzman, governor of the 
 Spanish possessions on the Gulf of Mexico and the 
 rival of Cortez, next traced the western shore of 
 the continent as far as the mouth of the Colorado 
 River. It is unnecessary to mention all the voy- 
 ages made by Cortez himself, by Ulloa, Allar^on 
 and Cabrillo, prior to 1543, by which time the 
 country between the 41st and 43rd parallels — 
 or what is now the northernmost limits of the 
 state of California — had been reached both by 
 sea and overland. Meanwhile the Spaniards had 
 established themselves firmly on both seaboards of 
 Central America and Mexico. The expeditions by 
 land were equally as notable as those by sea, and 
 6 
 
FRANCIS DRAKE 
 
 the hardships which they involved even more ter- 
 rible. The two friars, Marcos and Honorata, with 
 Francisco Vasquez de Coronada and Fernando de 
 Soto were the most celebrated leaders, and the 
 wished-for goal was the discovery of new Mexicos 
 and Perus. But Spain was not to repeat adventures 
 like these. The actual and more important result 
 was one that in itself she valued little — the deter- 
 mination of the coast of California and the ex- 
 ploration of a vast extent of the interior. 
 
 Coincidently with the earlier enterprises of 
 Spain, we are introduced, amid clash of swords, 
 decks slippery with blood and desperate battle 
 indescribable, to the British type of adventurer in 
 the Pacific — Francis Drake, the first Englishman 
 to sail a ship on its waters. Sea-dog and pirate 
 as he was, he lives forever in the memory of his 
 countrymen as the scourge of their ancient enem- 
 ies. With the immortals, Hawkins, Frobisher, and 
 Cavendish, he was one of the founders of the navy 
 of England. Rounding Cape Horn in 1578, he 
 burst upon the Spanish coast, eager for revenge 
 and treasure. The towns were unprepared for his 
 coming, and could offer but little resistance. So 
 inconceivable to the Spaniard was an Englishman 
 in the Pacific, that their ships, low in the water 
 with the gold and jewels of Peru, dipped colours 
 and waited for him as a friend. Drake’s story is so 
 wild, so terrible, as to be almost alone of its kind. 
 
 7 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Deep was the memory of his voyage to the Span- 
 ish coast; for a century after, his name was never 
 spoken but with horror. The age was one of re- 
 lentless cruelty and reprisals, and Drake gave less 
 perhaps than he would have received. His visit to 
 the Pacific is important as establishing the earliest 
 claim of England to an interest in that ocean. In 
 the spring of 1579 he sought to return by a north- 
 ern route, in order to avoid the Spaniards ; but after 
 reaching a point between the 42nd and 48th paral- 
 lels — or, according to some, as far north as the 
 southernmost islands of Alaska — and finding no 
 avenue of escape, he retraced his steps and put in 
 at a safe harbour for repairs. The bay a little north 
 of San Francisco, commonly known as Drake’s Bay, 
 was the point selected for this purpose. There he 
 remained for some time, having assumed, on be- 
 half of Queen Elizabeth, the sovereignty of the 
 North American coast, to which he gave the title 
 of New Albion. His ship, laden with booty, carried 
 him, in the end, safely home by way of the Philip- 
 pines, the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good 
 Hope, arriving at Portsmouth on September 
 26th, 1580. Cavendish, with hardly less of battle 
 and plunder, followed much the same course as 
 Drake, in the year 1587. 
 
 One who belongs to the century of Drake and 
 whose name is inseparably associated with the 
 waters of British Columbia, though the honour was 
 8 
 
JUAN DE FUCA 
 
 long withheld, was Juan de Fuca, a native of Ceph- 
 alonia. His real name was Apostolos Velerianos. 
 While in the service of the viceroy of Mexico, he 
 commanded, in 1592, an expedition northward, in 
 the course of which he entered the strait now known 
 by his name, between Vancouver Island and the 
 state of Washington. He sailed some distance 
 eastward, his course, as described by himself, cor- 
 responding in the main with the general direction of 
 the waters as we now know them. He returned, 
 however, before emerging northwards into the sea, 
 somewhat rashly concluding that he had discovered 
 the traditional Strait of Anian. For many years the 
 voyage was regarded as apocryphal, and it was not 
 until the strait was rediscovered by subsequent 
 navigators in the latitude assigned to it by Juan de 
 Fuca that the earlier sailor received his due meed 
 of renown. 
 
 During the period covered by these and other 
 early voyages in the Pacific, the struggle for the 
 sovereignty of the New World and the trade of 
 the distant West — a struggle destined to continue 
 for nearly three hundred years — had already begun 
 amongst the maritime nations of Europe. The 
 powers were Spain, Great Britain, France, Portugal 
 and Holland. The first, having established herself 
 in Central and South America, conquered the 
 Philippines and secured a foothold in the East 
 Indies. Portugal extended her trade to India and 
 
 9 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the South Seas. A new France arose in the valley 
 of the St. Lawrence. Great Britain planted vigor- 
 ous colonies on the North Atlantic coast. Dutch 
 navigators, throughout, laboured persistently in the 
 wake of their competitors. Here was ample field 
 for opposing interests. It was, however, the pre- 
 tentions of the Spaniards to exclusive domain in the 
 south and west that were most bitterly resented by 
 the rival nations. By virtue of prior discovery and of 
 the papal grant of 1493, no nation of Europe, with 
 the one exception of Portugal, was recognized by 
 the court of Madrid as having any claim to occupy 
 territory in America, or to navigate the western 
 Atlantic or any part of the Pacific. The exception- 
 al position of Spain had been in a measure re- 
 cognized by Great Britain in 1670, and confirmed 
 by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, though the terms 
 of these and other agreements were so vague, as 
 applied to a new and unknown continent, that they 
 served rather to increase than to prevent confusion. 
 It was, however, the efforts of England to establish 
 trade relations with the Spanish dominions which 
 constituted the cause of nearly all the disputes 
 between the two countries subsequent to the middle 
 of the sixteenth century. 
 
 In connection with this keen trade rivalry, which 
 has to do with much that follows, the difference 
 often remarked between the policy of Great Britain 
 and the continental powers should be borne in mind 
 from the outset. In the development of British 
 10 
 
RIVAL TRADE POLICIES 
 
 commercial and colonial empire, incomparably more 
 has been effected by the enterprise of private in- 
 dividuals than by government initiative. Certain of 
 the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns encouraged, and 
 even undertook, commercial ventures, and the fact 
 lent them a support among the trading classes 
 which stood them in good stead during periods of 
 political unrest and financial embarrassment. But 
 the practice was never extended into a principle. 
 The continental colonial policy, however, and not- 
 ably that of France and Spain, was almost wholly 
 paternal, designed to reflect the greatest possible 
 glory on the reigning monarch. The new possessions 
 were accordingly surrounded by a rigour of control 
 that ultimately crippled all expansion. On the other 
 hand, under the British policy, as exemplified on 
 the Atlantic seaboard of America, in the voyages 
 of British traders to the Pacific, or in the operation 
 of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the interior of 
 the continent, enterprise was ever untrammelled 
 and individual. To-day, as a consequence, North 
 America is the home of a free and progressive people, 
 while over the southern continent still hovers the 
 spirit of its Spanish origin, — restlessness, revolt, 
 and a lack of the genius of organization and 
 initiative. 
 
 From the date of de Fuca’s voyage, the Pacific 
 coast between the 43rd and the 55th parallels of 
 latitude remained for upwards of one hundred 
 and eighty years unvisited by any European navi- 
 
 11 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 gator. Roughly, the period embraces the whole 
 of the seventeenth, and three-quarters of the 
 eighteenth, century. Meanwhile, under the Spanish 
 king’s instructions, the coast of California had been 
 surveyed again by Sebastian Vizcaino, one of whose 
 ships reached the 43rd parallel in January, 1603. 
 The interval also included the establishment of 
 the Jesuit missions, and their subsequent expul- 
 sion from the Spanish dominions; sundry voyages 
 and discoveries in the Southern Pacific; the for- 
 mation and disappearance of a British colony in 
 the Falkland Islands; the establishment of Span- 
 ish settlements and Dominican missions on the 
 west coast of California, from which the Mexi- 
 can Creole of the present day is sprung; and, 
 most important of all, the gradual waning of the 
 power of Spain. On the whole, the record on the 
 Pacific was one of almost sheer stagnation. On the 
 Atlantic coast, during the same period, nations had 
 been born and cradled. France had founded a 
 great colony, and had lost it to England. England 
 had planted the seeds of the United States of 
 America. The whole eastern continent was sub- 
 dued to the Anglo-Saxon. In the great plains of 
 the interior, an empire within an empire, the Hud- 
 son’s Bay Company already bore sway. Still fur- 
 ther north and west, Russia had made good a 
 foothold that was eventually to include domin- 
 ions twice as large as the British Columbia of 
 to-day. 
 
 12 
 
THE VOYAGE OF THE SANTIAGO 
 
 Before entering upon the period which was to 
 decide forever to whom the ascendency in these 
 waters should belong, namely, the closing quarter 
 of the eighteenth century, certain final efforts of 
 Spain to perpetuate her exclusive grasp upon the 
 Pacific must be briefly dealt with. They followed 
 somewhat tardily upon the conclusion of an agree- 
 ment in 1763 with Great Britain and France, 
 whereby New Orleans and Louisiana west of the 
 Mississippi passed to Spain, while Canada, Florida 
 and the other French possessions in North America 
 were awarded to Great Britain. 
 
 Spain had at last awakened to the fact that the 
 maintenance of her sovereignty in the New World 
 called for decisive action. But official corruption, 
 the forerunner of national decay, had long ago set 
 in, and its effects were in no place more con- 
 spicuous than in America. Galvez, an officer of the 
 court of Castile, was sent as visit ador. On his ar- 
 rival, he at once determined upon the establish- 
 ment of colonies and garrisons on the west coast 
 of California. Pursuant to this policy, an effort 
 was made to explore the coast north of Cape 
 Blanco, on or about the 43rd parallel, beyond the 
 present boundary of California, to which point 
 Vizcaino had penetrated in 1602-3. In the year 
 1774, Juan Perez, accompanied by Estevan Jose 
 Martinez, made a notable voyage from San Bias in 
 the corvette Santiago . He was commissioned to 
 proceed to the 60th parallel, where it was assumed 
 
 13 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the north-west passage from the Atlantic would be 
 found, and to explore the coast line southward. 
 After reaching the northern islands of the Queen 
 Charlotte group, however, Perez steered home- 
 ward, passing some time in a bay which he called 
 Port San Lorenzo, — identified by some as Nootka 
 Sound on Vancouver Island, the anchorage of 
 Cook some fourteen years later, but more prob- 
 ably, according to recent investigations, a small 
 bay situated between Point Estevan and the 
 Escalante Reef. Upon his return to Monterey, the 
 Santiago was re- commissioned under command of 
 Heceta, with Perez as one of his officers. The 
 corvette was accompanied on her second voyage 
 by the schooner Sonora , commanded by the cele- 
 brated Don Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, 
 with Maurelle as pilot. This expedition was by far 
 the most notable of all the Spanish voyages to 
 the north-west coast and ranks high in the annals 
 of discovery in the Pacific. 
 
 With varying fortunes, the vessels steered north- 
 ward. Off the strait of Juan de Fuca, as they sup- 
 posed, they were blown southward by a heavy 
 gale. At the Isla de Dolores, subsequently named 
 Destruction Island, a boats crew was murdered by 
 the Indians. The vessels became separated, and 
 Heceta, losing heart, set sail for Monterey. On 
 the way he in part redeemed the venture from 
 failure by sighting, from twenty miles off shore, the 
 entrance to the great Columbia River ; but, with a 
 14 
 
BODEGA Y QUADRA 
 
 crew so stricken with scurvy that they could 
 neither reef sail nor drop anchor, he could venture 
 no nearer to confirm the discovery. If what he said 
 was true, he was the first white man to see that 
 famous stream. The promontory of San Rouge, near 
 by, he probably identified. Meanwhile, Quadra and 
 Maurelle kept bravely on, despite incredible hard- 
 ships and a greatly diminished crew, passing and 
 naming a number of coast features now well-known. 
 Anchoring finally in the Bay of Islands, on the 
 north side of Edgecomb Mountain, Quadra took 
 formal possession of the country in the name of 
 Spain. Returning southward, he surveyed the coast 
 line with the utmost care, to discover, if possible, 
 the Strait of Anian, or, failing that, the mouth 
 of the Columbia; but as his examination began 
 about thirty miles south of the proper latitude, 
 the quest at Cape Mendocino was abandoned. In 
 steering for San Francisco Bay, then well-known, 
 the Sonora entered a smaller bay to the north, 
 to which Bodega gave his own name. This is the 
 bay in which Sir Francis Drake is supposed to 
 have refitted, known to-day as Drakes Bay. Four 
 years later, Artfaga and Quadra, accompanied by 
 the faithful Maurelle, made still another voyage 
 of discovery, sighting Mount St. Elias, previously 
 known to the Russians, and entering Prince Wil- 
 liam’s Sound. 
 
 This was the third and final voyage of the 
 Spaniards in carrying out the policy inaugurated 
 
 15 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 under Galvez. Until nine years later, or the year 
 1788, no further attempt was made to extend the 
 power of Spain to the northward. In the interval, 
 events of the utmost importance had taken place, 
 events which were ultimately to loosen forever her 
 hold upon North America. Another and a more 
 aggressive nation had learned of the wealth of this 
 coast. When, in the year named, the Spaniards 
 sought once more to assert their claim, the seeds 
 had been planted for a controversy that brought 
 them to the verge of war and all but set aflame a 
 general European conflict. 
 
 That other and more aggressive nation was, of 
 course, Great Britain. Since the days when Sir 
 Francis Drake had swept like a hurricane along the 
 coast of South America, laying, perhaps unwitting- 
 ly, in these and other exploits, the foundation of 
 the naval supremacy of his country, England had 
 risen from a fourth or fifth rate power, with little 
 territory, limited population and resources, and a 
 small and irregular army, to the first rank among 
 the powers of Europe. The triumph was almost 
 wholly one of commerce. After the defeat of the 
 Armada, trade had based itself upon the naval 
 prowess of England and had thrust her steadily for- 
 ward. By the end of the seventeenth century she 
 had eclipsed her greatest rival of commerce on the 
 high seas — the Dutch. So, too, in the eighteenth 
 century, the trading class of Great Britain was the 
 16 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE PACIFIC 
 
 first to recognize the importance of the Pacific. 
 The time was opportune. England was herself 
 firmly established on the Atlantic coast. France 
 was no longer a power in America; the Revo- 
 lution and Napoleon were as yet hidden in the 
 political future. Spain’s recent endeavour to retain 
 her grasp on the Pacific and to justify her claims 
 to exclusive rights in its waters was but the 
 final effort of an expiring influence. Russia, a 
 more to be dreaded antagonist, had already for- 
 tified herself in the extreme north-west and was 
 known to have extended to the New World her 
 traditional policy of encroachment. Having con- 
 quered Siberia and established a trade with the 
 natives of the Alaskan archipelago, there had been 
 created a series of vested rights, more embarrassing 
 to Great Britain at this juncture than all the plans 
 of France and Spain combined. England, therefore, 
 was alive to her interests when she decided to 
 send expeditions at this time to delimit the shore 
 line of the continent. But the impelling motive was 
 commercial — to discover the passage, supposed, 
 somewhere between the 40th and 60th parallels, to 
 lead to the Atlantic. The key to the oriental trade, 
 more important even than the New World itself, 
 was thus the objective of the intrepid Cook and 
 Vancouver, and the fact is eminently characteristic 
 of British policy. It was left, too, in the end, to the 
 enterprise of commerce — to the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company and the North-West Company — to con- 
 
 17 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 serve for England her splendid domain in Western 
 America. The French Revolution and the ambition 
 of Napoleon withdrew her energies, at a critical 
 moment, for the defence of her own shores and the 
 preservation of Europe ; and these far off lands, 
 at that time as little known in the United States 
 as in the Old World itself, were left largely to 
 work out their own destinies. 
 
 The era of exploration that dawned with the 
 appearance of the British trader in these waters, 
 was included within the closing quarter of the 
 eighteenth century. It was the final and, in many 
 respects, the most brilliant in the history of dis- 
 covery in the Pacific. Great Britain played the 
 leading role, but Russia, France and Spain were 
 only less active. The United States also plunged 
 with all the ardour of young nationhood into the 
 quest of glory over seas. With the eager spirit 
 which had animated the earlier centuries of dis- 
 covery, the unexplored remainder of America was 
 now made known to geographers, and the outlines 
 of the continent charted with approximate ac- 
 curacy. The advantages of Great Britain lay in 
 the superiority of her methods of navigation, the 
 ability of her seamen, the strength of her com- 
 mercial fleet and her worldwide trade, whereby 
 she was able to utilize immediately and to the 
 fullest extent the wealth of her discoveries. Thus 
 it happened that of all the nations her efforts were 
 the most persistent and her work the most pains- 
 18 
 
THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE 
 
 taking and exact, and it was mainly through her 
 navigators that the world was finally enlightened 
 as to the character of the north-west coast. Spain 
 and Russia, though they sent out many expedi- 
 tions, added, in comparison, but little of value. 
 The Spaniards, in particular, pursued a policy of 
 secrecy which robbed them of much credit. But 
 the inferiority of their mathematical instruments 
 would still have left them handicapped in the 
 race with Great Britain. The work of Cook and 
 Vancouver demanded qualities of skill, as well as 
 of courage and endurance, that are not often dup- 
 licated in a single generation. 
 
 It is well to repeat, in connection with the voy- 
 ages of these two great commanders, that their 
 primary object was to survey the north-west coast 
 line, within specified parallels of latitude, and to dis- 
 cover whether any opening existed such as might 
 lead to the Atlantic Ocean by the supposititious 
 North-west Passage, for the discovery of which a 
 reward of twenty thousand pounds was offered by 
 the British admiralty. The narrative of J uan de 
 Fuca, though long discredited, had not been for- 
 gotten. The latitude of de Fuca’s opening was 
 between the 47th and 48th parallel. There was 
 also the reputed strait of Admiral de Fonte, an- 
 other and wholly mythical explorer of the seven- 
 teenth century, near the 53rd parallel. The fam- 
 ous river of Oregon, reported by Jonathan Car- 
 ver, might even connect by some mysterious chan- 
 
 19 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 nel with the waters of the long sought Strait 
 of Anian. It is not the first instance in history 
 in which a chimera, having laid hold of the popu- 
 lar imagination, paved the way for results more 
 important than were claimed for the original 
 fancy. 
 
 In 1778, the famous navigator, Captain James 
 Cook, arrived on the north-west coast of America. 
 He had two ships, the Resolution and the Dis- 
 covery , and his instructions from the British gov- 
 ernment were to examine the coast line from 
 about 45° north latitude to the Arctic Ocean, and 
 to ascertain whether any large rivers, inlets or 
 arms of the sea extended to the eastward. Cook 
 first sighted the coast in latitude 44° north; but, 
 having been blown off shore by bad weather, the 
 strait of Juan de Fuca escaped his observation. 
 Land was next seen in the vicinity of a large 
 sound, latitude 49° 30' north, in which Cook 
 anchored, March 29th, 1778. After a few weeks 
 spent in refitting his vessels and refreshing their 
 crews, he continued on his northward voyage, 
 his men having obtained a valuable quantity of 
 furs during their stay. Cook named the bay in 
 which he had passed this interval King George’s 
 Sound; but understanding afterwards that it was 
 called Nootka by the natives, it was re-named, 
 and has ever since been known as Nootka Sound. 
 It was Cook’s intention, on leaving Nootka, to 
 proceed as speedily as possible to the part of 
 20 
 
CAPTAIN COOK 
 
 the coast lying under the 65th parallel of lati- 
 tude; the violence of the weather, however, again 
 prevented him from approaching the land for 
 some days, and he was forced to leave unvisited 
 the region near the 53rd parallel where geogra- 
 phers had placed the strait of Fonte. Cook accord- 
 ingly denied the existence both of Fonte’s and 
 de Fuca’s channels. After discovering and naming 
 the two large bays known as Prince William’s 
 Sound and Cook’s Inlet, and having stayed a short 
 time at Unalaska, Cook proceeded to the Arctic 
 Ocean, passing through the strait which he named 
 Behring in honour of the Danish navigator who 
 had first discovered it. Turning about, he set sail for 
 the Sandwich Islands, where he was killed, Febru- 
 ary 14th, 1779. The ships then returned to Eng- 
 land. It was the report of these crews respecting 
 the boundless wealth in furs — to be had almost for 
 the asking on this coast — that aroused the Euro- 
 pean nations to action, and incited them, on Cook’s 
 narrative being given to the world in 1784, to 
 plan still further expeditions and discoveries. 
 
 Had an independent state arisen in that early 
 time on the north-west coast, it might fittingly 
 have chosen the sea-otter as its emblem. To the 
 early navigators of the North Pacific the sea-otter 
 offered the same lure of fortune as the gold and 
 silver of Peru to the soldiers of Spain. The tales of 
 the dangers of the chase and of the enormous profits 
 
 21 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 read like romance. So eager and relentless was the 
 trade that the sea-otter was already rare when 
 British Columbia placed the wapiti and the 
 mountain sheep on its escutcheon ; it has now 
 all but vanished, leaving no trace of the time when 
 it played so important a part in the history of the 
 region. With its discovery by Cook a new era be- 
 gins in the story of maritime adventure in the 
 Pacific. 
 
 The earliest expedition having the trade in otter 
 primarily in view was made by James Hanna, an 
 Englishman, in the year 1785. The voyage was 
 eminently successful. Otter skins were purchased 
 from the natives for trinkets, and sold at enormous- 
 ly enhanced prices in China, then the world’s market 
 for furs. About the same time, Guise, Meares and 
 Tipping came from England on a similar errand. 
 Meares spent the winter of 1786-7 in Prince 
 William’s Sound, where more than half his crew 
 died of scurvy. Portlock and Dixon, fur traders 
 sailing from London in 1785, made the discovery 
 of the separation of the Queen Charlotte group 
 from the mainland. The discovery was confirmed 
 in 1788 by Duncan, who, with Colnett, arrived 
 on the coast prior to the departure of Portlock 
 and Dixon. This and the numerous openings found 
 in the shore-line, all presumably channels extending 
 far to the eastward, led to the supposition that the 
 entire north-western portion of the American con- 
 tinent might be a vast collection of islands, and 
 22 
 
THE SEA-OTTER 
 
 the story of the mythical de Fonte’s voyage again 
 began to gain credit. It was at this time also that 
 the name of the old Greek pilot, Juan de Fuca, was 
 rescued from oblivion by the re-discovery of the 
 broad arm of the sea into which he declared 
 he had sailed in 1592. Barkley, an Englishman, in 
 command of the Imperial Eagle , a trader for 
 furs under the flag of the Austrian East India 
 Company, was, according to one version, the means 
 of rehabilitating de Fuca’s fame. After the sale of 
 the Imperial Eagle in the East Indies in 1788, 
 Barkley made a second voyage to the north-west 
 coast in the brig Halcyon . He was accompanied 
 on both voyages by his wife, the first white woman, 
 so far as known, to visit these shores. 
 
 With the separation of the American colonies 
 from Great Britain, a new element was introduced 
 into this growing commerce of the Pacific. The 
 moment the bond was broken, every skipper in 
 New England seemed to turn his thoughts seaward. 
 Great Britain being occupied in Europe and her 
 powerful competition therefore withdrawn, the 
 American ships were free to carry the new flag 
 wherever the ambition of trade might lead. And it 
 led far. Unrestrained, its sailors swept southward 
 to Cuba, to South America, and around Cape Horn. 
 In the year 1787, they made their first voyage to 
 the Pacific and the north-west coast, the ship 
 Columbia under Kendrick, and the sloop Lady 
 W ashington , under Gray of Boston, doubling Cape 
 
 23 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Horn together. The Lady Washington arrived 
 at Nootka on the 17th September, 1788, and 
 remained there with her consort during the 
 whole of the following winter. They were still 
 in Nootka Sound in 1789. The Coluvibia , now 
 by an exchange of commanders, under Gray, 
 returned to Boston by way of China, arriving in 
 August, 1790, when she was received amid great 
 rejoicings, medals being struck in honour of the 
 ship that had first carried the flag of the United 
 States almost fifty thousand miles around the world. 
 Meanwhile the Lady Washington , under Kendrick, 
 remained in Nootka Sound. In six weeks Gray had 
 refitted and had started again for the Pacific. 
 During this voyage he was destined to make one 
 of the greatest discoveries in the annals of his 
 country. On May 11th, 1792, he entered the 
 mouth of the Columbia River, accomplishing what 
 generations of navigators, Cook and Vancouver 
 among them, had sought in vain to do. On leaving 
 the river on May 20th, he gave it the name 
 of his ship. The honour of the discovery has been 
 claimed by the Spaniards, and for Broughton, the 
 lieutenant of Vancouver, who subsequently entered 
 the river and sailed a hundred miles against its cur- 
 rent in the armed brig Chatham ; but it undoubt- 
 edly belongs to Gray, one of the most modest and 
 worthy of the heroes of the Pacific. If the world 
 places Cook and Vancouver in the niches of its naval 
 heroes, Gray must be placed between them. 
 
 24 
 
LA PEROUSE 
 
 For Kendrick, the comrade of Gray, has been 
 claimed the credit of re-discovering the strait of 
 Juan de Fuca, though the matter is one of con- 
 troversy. Metcalfe, a citizen of the United States, 
 visited Nootka in 1789 ; and Ingraham explored the 
 coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1791 in the 
 brig Hope . The latter left a very important 
 description of the geography and natural history 
 of the islands, and of the language, manners and 
 customs of the natives. With the exception, how- 
 ever, of the discovery of the Columbia by Gray, the 
 passage of the strait of Juan de Fuca by Kendrick, 
 and the cruise of the Hope , nothing of special 
 importance was achieved by American enterprise at 
 that period. For a time their traders were active 
 and numerous, but they followed trade alone, and 
 cared little for discovery or exploration. 
 
 The north-west coast about this period attrac- 
 ted the attention of other nations than Great 
 Britain and the United States. La Perouse, a 
 distinguished naval officer of France, spent three 
 months in 1788, under orders from his govern- 
 ment, between the 52nd and 54th parallels, mak- 
 ing a scientific examination of the coast. He 
 was followed in 1791 by Etienne Marchand, who, 
 in a merchant ship, followed much the same 
 course, leaving an account of his voyage in three 
 volumes. Malaspina, from whom the strait of 
 that name is called, in the same year endeavour- 
 ed, with two Spanish ships, to determine in more 
 
 25 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 northern latitudes the existence of the Strait of 
 Anian. Important also in this connection was the 
 attempt of Elisa, in the summer of 1790, to explore 
 the strait of Juan de Fuca, his lieutenant, Quimper, 
 examining both shores for a distance of one hundred 
 miles, but being unable, for lack of time, to follow 
 the many channels and inlets the general direction 
 of which was noted. Many Spanish names were 
 given; few of them have survived. The Spaniards 
 undertook a permanent establishment at Friendly 
 Cove, Nootka, in 1790 ; and in 1792 endeavoured 
 to form a settlement at Neah Bay, near Cape Flat- 
 tery. From the former basis, Elisa, its commandant, 
 sent Fidalgo, his lieutenant, to examine the coast 
 to northward occupied by the Russians, and to en- 
 quire into the nature of their operations. He ac- 
 quired but little geographical information of value. 
 One of the Russian ships reported by him was 
 that which, in command of Joseph Billings, in 
 1790, visited Unalaska, Nodiak and Prince Wil- 
 liam’s Sound. 
 
 A voyage of the British captain, Meares, in 
 1788, which is a part of this fur-trading chronicle, 
 owes its importance, not to any achievement of the 
 expedition itself, but to the diplomatic results 
 which it was the means, sometime later, of bring- 
 ing about. War with Spain was, for a short season, 
 imminent, and the termination of the “ Nootka 
 Affair,” which had its origin in Meares’s operations 
 at Friendly Cove, gave to Britain the control of an 
 26 
 
MEARES AT NOOTKA 
 
 important territory, though the terms of the settle- 
 ment itself, as will be seen, opened the door to a 
 further series of controversies which were not finally 
 laid at rest until the fixing of the Oregon boundary 
 in 1846. In the year 1788 Meares was at Canton, 
 China, engaged, with the assistance of some Eng- 
 lish merchants, in fitting out an expedition of two 
 vessels for the American trade, — the Felice and 
 the Iphigenia Nubiana , commanded by himself and 
 Captain William Douglas, respectively. The ships, 
 though British property and navigated by British 
 subjects, sailed under the Portuguese flag, and 
 were ostensibly owned by Don Cavallo & Co., of 
 Macao, the object being to escape the heavy dues 
 levied by the Chinese authorities on the goods of 
 nations other than the Portuguese. On February 
 12th, the Iphigenia sailed for Cook’s River, and 
 the Felice for Nootka Sound, the latter arriv- 
 ing on May 15th. The most notable native 
 chiefs of Nootka at that time were Maquinna 
 and Callicum, with whom Meares cultivated friend- 
 ly relations, and by whom, and by the natives gen- 
 erally, he was warmly welcomed. It was Meares’s 
 purpose to establish at this point a post which 
 might become the basis of the fur trade of the 
 future. With this in view, he purchased from 
 Maquinna a tract of land on the shore of Friendly 
 Cove for which he paid some eight or ten sheets of 
 copper and other articles. Here he erected a sub- 
 stantial structure surrounded with breastworks and 
 
 27 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 armed with one cannon. The British flag was 
 hoisted and for the first time waved above a formal 
 British possession on this coast. At Nootka, Meares 
 also built the first ship launched in what is now 
 British Columbia — the North-west America . Later 
 he explored the coast southward, narrowly missing 
 the mouth of the Columbia, and on his return en- 
 tered and examined the strait of Juan de Fuca for 
 some distance, taking possession of it in the name 
 of Great Britain. His ship, after again reaching 
 Friendly Cove, was joined by her consort the Iphi - 
 genia from Cook’s River, with a large cargo of sea- 
 otter. Later Meares sailed for China with the furs, 
 while the Iphigenia and the North-west America 
 repaired to the Sandwich Islands. 
 
 The succeeding events which enter into the fam- 
 ous Nootka affair are too intricate to be more than 
 mentioned here. Douglas, with the Iphigenia and 
 the North-west America returned to Nootka in the 
 following year for the purpose of continuing the 
 fur trade. Thereupon both vessels were seized by 
 a Spanish ship of war commanded by Martinez, 
 who was under orders to assert the sovereignty of 
 the king of Spain throughout the Pacific Ocean. 
 Nootka, which the Spanish called Port San Lor- 
 enzo, was claimed by Martinez, by right of dis- 
 covery. Douglas, however, was able to show from 
 a chart of the voyage of the Santiago in 1775 that 
 Cook, and not the Spaniard, was the discoverer 
 of Nootka Sound. The Iphigenia was thereupon 
 28 
 
THE NOOTKA AFFAIR 
 
 released by Martinez, and the greater part of his 
 stores returned to Douglas, with the warning, how- 
 ever, that he was to trade no more on that coast. 
 Douglas subsequently sailed to the Queen Char- 
 lotte Islands and thence to China. Soon after, the 
 British ships Princess Royal and Argonaut , sent 
 from Macao by the Associated Companies to 
 trade on the north-west coast, were seized in like 
 manner, and, with the North-west America were 
 pressed into the service of Spain. The crew 
 of the North-west America was sent to China on 
 the American ship Columbia then in those waters; 
 but the crews of the two other ships were 
 deported to San Bias, where they were treated 
 with cruelty. Nootka was taken formal possession 
 of and was occupied by Spain until 1795. 
 
 The dispute which immediately arose between 
 the governments of Great Britain and Spain forms 
 one of the most important chapters in the history 
 of the north-west coast. Not only a matter of 
 moment in itself, it was the basis for most of the 
 controversy that followed over the possession of this 
 territory. Spain, as we have seen, still claimed the 
 exclusive right to the western seas. All foreign 
 vessels found without license in these waters were 
 regarded as enemies, even though belonging to a 
 nation at peace with the king. No other country, 
 moreover, was held to have rights in any territory 
 to reach which it was necessary to pass around 
 Cape Horn or through the Straits of Magellan. 
 
 29 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Such were the fancies still nursed by Spain in the 
 eighteenth century. It was doubtless the final 
 consciousness that the encroachments of other 
 nations on her traditional sphere of influence 
 would effectively overthrow all semblance of her 
 right to exclusive sovereignty that induced Spain 
 now to make a final attempt to confirm her 
 original claim. Whatever may be said of the un- 
 doubted priority of Spanish enterprise in the 
 Pacific, England had been more active in the ex- 
 ploration of the north-west portion of it, and had 
 inaugurated, and now enjoyed, the greater part of 
 the trade in that part of the world. Without other 
 grounds of sovereignty than the papal concession 
 of three hundred years before, which embraced 
 half the area of the world and included a continent 
 which was not then known to exist, Spains case, 
 on the threshold of the nineteenth century, and 
 within sixty years of the freedom of Italy, stood 
 on a tottering basis. 
 
 When the news of the seizures reached England, 
 a vigorous protest was immediately lodged with 
 the Spanish government. Pitt, then at the zenith 
 of his power, united a profound knowledge of 
 Spanish decrepitude with a wholesome belief in 
 the ability of Great Britain to defend her own 
 interests. The Spanish government, more skilled in 
 the arts of intrigue than of statesmanship, and seek- 
 ing at first to evade the issue, was met with a dem- 
 onstration in force. The principle that “British sub- 
 30 
 
THE NOOTKA CONVENTION 
 
 jects have an indisputable right to the enjoyment 
 of a free and uninterrupted navigation, commerce 
 and fishery, and to the possession of such establish- 
 ments as they should form, with the consent of 
 the natives of the country, and not occupied by 
 any other European nation,” was enunciated with 
 emphasis. Spain, whose power had rapidly de- 
 clined, could not risk a war with England. After 
 repeated conferences, she agreed to restore the 
 seized vessels, to indemnify the owners for their 
 losses, and to give satisfaction to the dignity of the 
 British Crown. It was understood at the same time 
 that the Spanish declaration “was not to preclude 
 or prejudice the ulterior discussion of any right 
 which His Catholic Majesty might claim to form 
 an exclusive establishment at Nootka Sound.” The 
 amount of indemnity was fixed by a commission at 
 $210,000. This was handed over to the owners of 
 the property which had been seized, and Nootka 
 and the adjoining territory were restored to the 
 British Crown. 
 
 Into the final settlement a number of considera- 
 tions entered which deprived Great Britain of 
 much of the strength of her position. Pitt was 
 undoubtedly determined, in the event of war, to 
 strike a blow at the Spanish Empire in America. 
 Spain, however, by the terms of the Family Com- 
 pact, had the ear of France. The times were not 
 happy for England. The French Revolution was 
 already brewing; Europe was arming; and a series 
 
 31 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 of continental alliances left Great Britain isolated. 
 With a diminished credit, the government leaned 
 towards a peaceful solution of the difficulty; and 
 apart from the restitution of property and the re- 
 paration made for losses and acts of violence, the 
 treaty left the situation in the north-west coast to 
 all intents unaltered. In parliament it was vigorously 
 attacked as a capitulation to Spain. Fox pointed 
 out that it enlarged the area of dispute, and pre- 
 dicted a renewal of the difficulty. In this, time 
 proved Fox right. The prestige of the country, 
 however, had been vindicated; and the govern- 
 ment, with a large majority at its back, was glad 
 to be rid of an embarrassing situation. In the light 
 of history it may be regretted that motives of 
 temporary expediency, in this as in other instances, 
 should have dictated the policy of Great Britain 
 with regard to her interests in America. There 
 were at that period only two other claimants to 
 the Pacific coast, Spain and Russia. The latter had 
 undoubtedly no rights south of the 60th parallel, 
 while the former had established no title to the 
 coast north of the 38th parallel which was superior 
 to that of Great Britain. A decisive stroke might 
 have secured the states of Washington, Oregon 
 and a large portion of California, for all time to 
 come. 
 
 Pursuant to the terms of the Nootka conven- 
 tion, commissioners were appointed by the govern- 
 ments of Spain and Great Britain to effect the 
 32 
 
VANCOUVER AND QUADRA 
 
 formal act of restitution. The men selected were 
 George Vancouver, and one whose intrepidity has 
 been already witnessed, Bodega y Quadra. Wor- 
 thier representatives of the two great powers, it 
 would have been impossible to choose. Steadfast 
 as they both were in enforcing the claims of their 
 sovereigns, and zealous to the last degree for the 
 rights of their respective countries, each, neverthe- 
 less, could recognize in the other high courage, 
 splendid ability and true greatness of character. 
 While honour forbade compromise, they neverthe- 
 less became firm friends and to the last maintained 
 the highest admiration for each other. Their names 
 will forever remain associated as two of the great- 
 est in the history of the north-west coast. 
 
 Though the commissioners had explicit instruc- 
 tions from their governments as to the manner in 
 which Nootka should be handed over, they inter- 
 preted their orders in a widely different spirit. 
 Quadra maintained that restitution was required 
 only of the buildings and lands that had been 
 occupied by British subjects; and as, from due 
 inquiry, he could find no evidence of such occupa- 
 tion, he argued that there was nothing to be paid 
 for by Spain. Vancouver, on the other hand, held 
 that, under the terms of the convention, Great 
 Britain was entitled to the possession of the whole 
 of the territory surrounding Nootka and Clayo- 
 quot. Widely divergent evidence was offered in 
 support of the opposing claims. The immediate 
 
 33 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 result was that the commissioners, unable to come 
 to a satisfactory understanding, referred the dis- 
 pute back to their respective governments, Noot- 
 ka remaining in the interval under the Spanish 
 flag. 
 
 Vancouver with his two ships, the Discovery 
 commanded by himself, and the brig Chatham , 
 under Broughton, who had previously surveyed the 
 coast from Cape Mendocino northward, now pro- 
 ceeded to the second and most important part of 
 his commission — the thorough exploration of the 
 whole north-west shore line. The aim, as ever, was 
 to solve the problem of the north-west passage; it 
 was also to establish England’s claim to the coast 
 between New Spain on the south, and Russian 
 America on the north. The work of Vancouver 
 and his lieutenants in this connection was so 
 minute as to be final. The summers of 1792, 1793 
 and 1794 were spent on the coast, and the obser- 
 vations included every bay, cape and channel from 
 San Francisco to Behring Sea. The winters were 
 passed at the Sandwich Islands. On his untiring 
 energy success attended from first to last, and his 
 work remains the most extensive nautical survey 
 ever completed in one expedition. To Vancouver, 
 accordingly, we owe in large measure the nomen- 
 clature of the North Pacific coast. In the names 
 which he chose many were of persons distinguish- 
 ed in the official life of his day; many were of 
 humble members of his crew. 
 
 34 
 
RESTORATION OF NOOTKA 
 
 Vancouver sailed, for the last time, from the 
 north-west coast on October 16th, 1794. On Christ- 
 mas Day of that year, being still at sea, he finds it 
 of interest to record that the crew did not fail to 
 drink in silence to the memory of Quadra, who had 
 died some time before. He was to be followed soon 
 by Vancouver himself. The friendship of the two 
 men was cemented by the name given by Van- 
 couver to the great island of the mid-Pacific coast, 
 for long afterwards known as “Quadra and Van- 
 couver Island.” In the efflux of time, the Spaniards 
 having abandoned the coast altogether, the name 
 Quadra was dropped and the temporary triumph at 
 Nootka was thus avenged at the expense of one of 
 the most noble of his race. In the settlement of the 
 Nootka affair also, Vancouver’s view in the end pre- 
 vailed, and on the morning of March 28th, 1795, 
 Lieutenant Pierce and Brigadier- General Alca, 
 representing respectively the governments of Eng- 
 land and Spain, completed the act of restitution, 
 and the British flag was hoisted, never again to be 
 hauled down. 
 
 When Vancouver was at Point Gray, in the 
 Gulf of Georgia, near the site of the present city 
 of Vancouver, he fell in with two Spanish vessels 
 of war, the Sutil and the Meocicana, com- 
 manded respectively by Lieutenants Galiano and 
 Valdez. They were small and badly equipped, and 
 they were the last sent by Spain into the North 
 Atlantic Ocean for purposes of discovery. The 
 
 35 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 expedition has this distinction, however, that it is 
 the only one, since that of Vizcaino, of which an 
 adequate account has been given to the world 
 with the sanction of the Spanish government. The 
 journal of Galiano and Valdez was published at 
 Madrid in 1802, by order of the king, with an 
 introduction which included an historical sketch of 
 the earlier voyages of the Spaniards on the coasts of 
 America north of Mexico. The introduction is now, 
 naturally, the most valuable part of the work. 
 Notwithstanding its activity for a time, Spanish 
 exploration had resulted in nothing. No colonies 
 were established; no trade was built up; no terri- 
 tory was acquired. A few names dotting the maps 
 of the coast — Haro, Valdez, Texada, San Juan, 
 and the like — are all that remain to show the 
 once all-powerful influence of Spain. The ma- 
 jority even of these have been replaced by the 
 names given by English navigators, particularly 
 those of Vancouver, and are known to-day only to 
 the map-maker and the student of early coast 
 history. 
 
 It may be added that Great Britain herself, for 
 a long time after the date of the Nootka Treaty, 
 ceased to take further interest in the territory 
 which it affected. The victory, in fact, was one of 
 diplomacy alone. For many years a thousand miles 
 of the Pacific coast was in reality a “no mans 
 land,” and it is in no sense due to the prescience of 
 the statesmen of the early nineteenth century that 
 36 
 
RUSSIA IN AMERICA 
 
 it is British territory to-day. We must remember, 
 of course, in mitigation of the indifference felt by 
 Great Britain as to its future, the circumstances 
 and conditions of the times, the remoteness of the 
 region and the almost total lack of knowledge 
 concerning it. It was the fur trade, not the nation, 
 which pushed its way overland into this western 
 empire, and carried with it the supremacy of the 
 British flag and the authority of British law. 
 
 Several terrible encounters with the Indians 
 occurred when the trade was at its height. In 
 1803, the American ship Boston was destroyed 
 by the natives of Nootka Sound, all the crew 
 being murdered, with the exception of the ar- 
 mourer and the sailmaker who were kept in slavery 
 for four years by that chief Maquinna who figured 
 so prominently in Vancouver’s and Quadra’s day. 
 In 1805, the Atahualpa , of Rhode Island, was 
 attacked by the savages of Millbank Sound, and 
 her captain, mate and six seamen killed, after 
 which the sailors succeeded in repelling the assail- 
 ants and saving the vessel. In the same manner the 
 Tonquin of Boston, the first vessel of the As- 
 torians, was in June, 1811, attacked by the natives 
 while at anchor in Clayoquot Sound and the entire 
 crew massacred. 
 
 We may turn now to the other great power that 
 had entrenched itself, even more securely than 
 
 37 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Great Britain, on the north-western coast, a power 
 that has menaced at more points than one the 
 advance of the British Empire. In 1788 Haro, on 
 the return of a Spanish expedition from Alaska, 
 wrote to San Bias that he had found Russian 
 establishments between the 59th and 60th parallels. 
 The results of that occupation were still alive in 
 the Behring Sea and Alaska boundary disputes 
 of the present generation. 
 
 In Siberia, as in the northern part of the 
 American continent, the stimulus to early adventure 
 and exploration had come from the fur trade. By 
 the middle of the seventeenth century the Russians 
 had pushed their way into that vast and desolate 
 territory, and, early in the eighteenth, had com- 
 pleted the conquest of the whole of northern Asia. 
 Rich in furs of all kinds, the newly acquired possess- 
 ion afforded a fruitful field for exploitation, the 
 more so on account of its proximity to the markets 
 of China, with which trade relations were speedily 
 established. Communication was provided by means 
 of caravans, a system somewhat analogous to the 
 brigades of the Hudson’s Bay Company. But in 
 trade it is what lies just beyond that lures. Expedi- 
 tions from the northern rivers of Siberia had by 
 1648 found their way around the north-eastern ex- 
 tremity of Asia into Behring Strait, and at least 
 one vessel was driven by storm in that year upon 
 the coast of Kamtchatka. After repeated adventures 
 of this kind and the establishment of intercourse 
 38 
 
DISCOVERIES OF BEHRING 
 
 with the natives of this far-off region, Kamtchatka 
 was definitely included in the territory of the 
 traders. But accounts were now brought back of 
 still another continent looming beyond the islands 
 of these northern seas. W as it America ? Or was it 
 a new land altogether — wedged in between the 
 eastern shores of Asia and the western limits of 
 America ? Peter the Great, his ambition unap- 
 peased by the subjugation of Siberia, resolved 
 to emulate the conquests of his European rivals in 
 the New World. To this end he equipped an ex- 
 pedition under Vitus Behring, a Dane attracted to 
 the Russian service, whose heroic career received 
 scant justice from his own age. Sailing from Kamt- 
 chatka in 1728, Behring passed through the strait 
 which separates Asia from America and satisfied 
 himself on the then disputed point whether the 
 continents were two or one. In that and the follow- 
 ing year, however, he did little to determine the re- 
 lative position of the new land. 
 
 It is unnecessary, for the present purpose, to detail 
 the various stages by which the conclusions of 
 Behring’s first voyage were confirmed and amplified. 
 A later expedition, under the same unflinching cap- 
 tain, set out after an interval of three years, and 
 was prolonged until his death. It succeeded in 
 reaching the 53rd parallel of latitude, discover- 
 ing the Shumagin Islands and the aborigines. 
 The latter were, in the main, like those of 
 Northern Asia, and though they had never seen 
 
 39 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 white men before, they had knives and other articles 
 of iron and copper, which it was supposed they had 
 obtained through trade with the Siberian natives. 
 Behring’s final expedition was one of terrible hard- 
 ships. He was by this time old and imbecile. Worn 
 by sickness and anxiety, he died, on November 
 28th, 1741, on an island on which his ship had 
 been driven by stress of weather. The island was 
 afterwards named in his honour, as well as the great 
 northern sea and strait in which so much of his 
 activity had been displayed. With Behring were 
 associated Chirikoff, scarcely less unfortunate, and 
 the naturalist Groyers, who also lost his life. 
 
 The last voyage of Behring had one very im- 
 portant result : it laid the foundations of the trade 
 in furs between Russia and the American continent. 
 In the privations of the expedition, provisions 
 failed, and the crew were forced to subsist for a time 
 on the flesh of sea- otter — “ sea beaver ” as they were 
 called by the Russians — which they hunted and 
 killed. The skins were preserved, and on the return 
 of the ships brought extravagant prices from the 
 Chinese merchants. News of this character was not 
 long in reaching the ears of the Siberian traders. 
 From this chance beginning, a series of private 
 expeditions were soon racing each other across the 
 Pacific with the object of the new trade in otter. 
 They were continued in ever-increasing numbers 
 over a period of a quarter of a century or more. 
 Incidentally they added much to the knowledge 
 40 
 
THE PROMISHLENIKS 
 
 of the islands between Kamtchatka and Am- 
 erica. 
 
 In all the long annals of commercial enterprise, 
 lawful and unrighteous, the traffic of these Russian 
 adventurers has been surpassed in horrors by one 
 and one only — the African slave trade. The vessels 
 were small, many of them built of green planks 
 lashed with deer sinew or thongs of walrus hide to 
 the timbers, and caulked with moss. The traders 
 themselves, known to the Russians as Promish- 
 leniks, were the riff-raff of Siberia, criminals often, 
 though sometimes of noble, even of royal, lineage, 
 amenable only to passion and the law of greed. 
 Being nearly all landsmen, they sailed usually by 
 dead reckoning alone. It is not surprising that 
 numbers of their crazy craft were annually cast 
 away. The crews were the victims of unheard-of 
 cruelties, as well as suffering every conceivable 
 hardship from cold, starvation and disease. In addi- 
 tion, they were attacked and murdered on every 
 available opportunity by the natives, in revenge 
 for the enforcement of levies, the debauching of 
 their women, and the slaughter and enslavement 
 of their men by the traders, — ending in a state of 
 open war that twice wiped Russian settlement 
 from the coast of America. Yet, prompted as were 
 these expeditions by lust and avarice, accompanied 
 by many of the most revolting atrocities that ever 
 disgraced the name of humanity, it is impossible to 
 withhold a tribute of admiration for the energy 
 
 41 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 with which voyage after voyage was made, or for 
 the courage, stubborn as it was reckless, displayed 
 by the traders amidst their appalling difficulties. 
 As a matter of fact, the outrages of the place and 
 period were not confined to the Promishleniks, but 
 characterized the whole Russian administration. 
 They were contrary to the express instructions of 
 the government; but, as the Russian proverb said: 
 “God was high in the Heavens, and the Czar was 
 far away.” 
 
 The immediate successor of Peter the Great 
 continued the policy of expansion begun by that 
 sovereign. Synd, Krenitzin and Levaschef com- 
 manded explorations to America between 1764 
 and 1769. The first cargo of furs to enter Canton 
 by ship was carried by a party of Polish exiles 
 who escaped from Kamtchatka, and under the 
 Polish flag cruised through Behring Sea and among 
 the Aleutian Islands. The story of this desperate 
 venture is in itself material for a romance. No ex- 
 peditions of note followed for some years after- 
 wards. Up to the time of Cook, notwithstanding 
 the number of Russian vessels that had been in 
 Alaskan waters, no exact geographical knowledge 
 had been gained respecting that portion of the 
 coast, and the errors in recorded latitudes and 
 longitudes were sometimes very great. 
 
 In 1781, Ivan GolikofF, the celebrated Gregory 
 Skelikoff, and other Russian fur merchants, or- 
 ganized themselves into a formal trading associa- 
 42 
 
THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN COMPANY 
 
 tion. There was need enough for organization of 
 some sort. Four years after Behring’s discovery of 
 the sea-otter, seventy-seven Russian concerns were 
 hunting in the islands of Alaska. This was the 
 beginning of the Alaskan fur monopoly, later to 
 become of international importance. A rival com- 
 pany was formed in 1797, but was soon after ab- 
 sorbed into what was known as the SkelikofF 
 United Trading Company. Still another company 
 was projected in the following year. In 1799, how- 
 ever, the Emperor Paul took all the rival traders 
 under his protection, consolidated their interests, 
 and granted them a charter for twenty years as 
 the Russian American Company, with sole control 
 over the coasts of America north of the 55th paral- 
 lel of latitude. Their obligations were: to organize 
 settlements; to promote agriculture, trade and 
 discovery; to propagate the Greek Catholic faith; 
 and, without interfering with the rights of other 
 nations, to extend the influence and sovereignty of 
 Russia in the Pacific. The capital was fixed at 
 ninety-eight thousand silver roubles. 
 
 Without going into details as to this highly or- 
 ganized company which, in the nature and extent 
 of its powers and in the vastness of the territory 
 over which it ruled, resembled the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company, it may be stated that its sway was 
 virtually absolute in the country, even to the 
 life of the inhabitants. All persons and property 
 were under the control of the chief director, 
 
 43 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 who lived in Kadiak, and from whom there was no 
 appeal except to a board of governors far away 
 at Irkutsk. Its regulations were in general just and 
 humane; but their enforcement was entrusted to 
 men with whom justice and humanity were sub- 
 servient always to interest and expediency, and 
 sometimes to baser passions. Baranoff, one of the 
 most picturesque figures of his time, ruling for 
 twenty years like a despot over the colonies from 
 his castle overlooking the village of Sitka, may be 
 taken as the outstanding type of the local Russian 
 governor, iron-hearted, iron-framed, bold, shrewd, 
 unscrupulous, alternating days of toil with nights 
 of revel on raw and fiery vodka , a Peter the 
 Great in miniature among vagabonds and adven- 
 turers. 
 
 It was part of the policy of Russia, in pursuance 
 of a method already traditional, to establish her 
 power in America to the exclusion of all other 
 nations north of the Spanish zone. To this end, dur- 
 ing the regime of Baranoff, Von Resanoff was dis- 
 patched to plant Russian colonies at the mouth 
 of the Columbia and on the Californian coast. In 
 this he failed. Searching for the estuary of the Col- 
 umbia, — at the very time, it may be noted, that 
 Lewis and Clark, the pioneers of discovery over- 
 land from the United States, were leaving their 
 winter quarters at Clatsop, — he either missed it 
 altogether or was unable to cross the bar, and so 
 passed on to California. Later, however, in 1812, a 
 44 
 
LATER RUSSIAN ENTERPRISE 
 
 Russian colony was established on Bodega Bay by 
 KuskofF, and was known for many years as the 
 Ross, that is, the Russian, settlement. It con- 
 tinued with varying fortunes until 1841 , when it 
 was purchased by the American trader, Sutter, for 
 $ 80 , 000 . These operations are of importance in the 
 light of the claim later advanced that the Russian 
 American Company controlled the whole Pacific 
 coast of America and adjacent islands, from 
 Behring Strait to the mouth of the Columbia. 
 That famous company, it may be added, main- 
 tained its existence through a long and chequered 
 career, renewing its charter from time to time 
 until 1861 , when it fell into decay and was not 
 again revived. 
 
 A word may be added in completion of this 
 hasty outline. BaranofF died in 1819 , broken-hearted 
 by his recall. Thereafter, a more enlightened and 
 humane policy was introduced, and many of the 
 old abuses were removed or abated. Baron Wran- 
 gell, who had followed BaranofF as director-gen- 
 eral, was succeeded in 1836 by KuprianofF. In 
 1840 , Adolphus Etoline, a young admiral of noble 
 birth, became governor. The splendour of his 
 rule was in startling contrast with the ways of 
 BaranofF, who lived in Spartan simplicity and 
 ruled without ruffles. In still greater contrast was 
 the luxury of Etoline’s castle with the squalor of 
 the village surrounding it. It was Etoline whom 
 Douglas visited as an officer of the Hudson’s Bay 
 
 45 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Company in 1842, in connection with affairs of busi- 
 ness between the two companies. 
 
 During the period of Russian occupation, and 
 especially between the date of Cook’s voyage and 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, continuous 
 activity was displayed in the exploration of the 
 north-west coast, with more particular reference to 
 the portion now included in Alaska. In addition to 
 the voyages already mentioned, many expeditions 
 of note were undertaken both on private and official 
 initiative. Those of Lastochkin and Pribyloffin 1787; 
 of Ismyloff, Bechareff, and Delareff in 1788 ; of 
 Joseph Billings and Martin Sauer in 1769 and 1791 ; 
 of Khwostoff and Davidoff in 1802 ; of Krusenstern 
 and Lisiansky in 1803 and subsequent years ; of 
 Kiskoff in 1808 ; of Kotzebue in 1816 and 1823 ; 
 of Baron Wrangell and Etoline in 1820 and 1822; 
 are worthy of special mention. The most important 
 of all, no doubt, were the explorations of Krusen- 
 stern and Lisiansky, of which a full account is 
 given in the journal of Krusenstern himself, a mine 
 of information on all points relating to Russian 
 enterprise on the North Pacific coast. 
 
 The story of Russia in North America is singu- 
 larly sordid and unattractive where it is not merely 
 terrible. The stern Alaskan coast has its intervals 
 of warmth and sunshine ; but there is no time in the 
 period of Russian sovereignty that is not gloomy and 
 forbidding, overcast with heavy clouds of human 
 suffering and, despair. 
 
 46 
 
THE PASSING OF THE NAVIGATOR 
 
 In the foregoing pages it has been sought to 
 trace, in outline, the salient features of that long 
 and stirring period during which the coast line of 
 America, stretching for twelve thousand miles from 
 Cape Horn to Behring Sea, became known — at 
 what a price of sacrifice and endeavour ! — to human 
 enterprise. The story of the period, it was seen, 
 divided itself naturally into three parts, correspond- 
 ing in the main with the activities of three great 
 nations, — Spain, Russia and Great Britain. W e may 
 include the last even here, because, while her oc- 
 cupation of the middle coast was never until later 
 times as definite as that of her rivals in the north 
 and south, she was finally, after a long interval of 
 diplomacy, to establish herself permanently within 
 her sphere, while the others have vanished from the 
 continent. With Vancouver, the era of discovery 
 came to an end. Thenceforward the field of the ex- 
 plorer was shifted to the Arctic Ocean, where his 
 continued activity is of interest as showing the 
 tenacity with which the British clung to the idea of 
 a north-west passage. Merchant vessels from the 
 United States and other countries continued 
 meanwhile to come and go at intervals. With 
 the establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company 
 at Fort Vancouver in 1824 a regular trade with 
 England, by way of Cape Horn, sprang up. The 
 date of the Beaver , the first steamship in the Paci- 
 fic, was 1835. The coastwise trade developed later, 
 until, within a few years, as the Pacific became 
 
 47 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 more and more the meeting place of East and 
 W est, the merchant marine employed in its service 
 had multiplied into a powerful fleet. We have now, 
 however, to turn from the tale of seafaring trade 
 and adventure to the pioneers of travel overland, 
 to the scouts and convoys of the fur-traders who, 
 by sled, ox-cart and canoe, opened up, over a net- 
 work of trails and great rivers as perilous as the 
 ocean itself, a way of communication across the 
 plains and mountains of the west and on to the 
 Pacific. 
 
 48 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TRAVELLER OVERLAND 
 
 I N the record of coastwise exploration, of which 
 a brief account was given in the preceding 
 chapter, it will have been noted that the explorers, 
 if they landed at all, did not ordinarily venture 
 beyond gunshot of the waters whereon their vessels 
 rode, and that the information they brought back 
 related entirely to the configuration of the shore or 
 to the animal life which teemed in the adjacent 
 seas. The traveller overland was scarcely possible 
 until the sailor had supplied him with a sure ob- 
 jective; but his advent, when at last he came, had 
 a more immediate significance for the country. He 
 came as the forerunner of the trade that had 
 already opened up the whole of the interior con- 
 tinent and that is notable in history for the fierce 
 rivalry with which it sought new worlds to con- 
 quer. With the first dip of his paddle in the tumul- 
 tuous upper waters of the western slope, the hour 
 of civilization for that mighty region may be said 
 to have struck; while with the firm establishment 
 of the fur trade as the dominant local influence 
 we are come at once to a period from which condi- 
 tions began — tentatively at first, but in accordance 
 with a definite process — to take on the form which 
 was destined to be final. The sailor showed the 
 
 49 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 way, but it was the overland traveller who entered 
 in and took possession. 
 
 There is a wealth of material bearing on this 
 important epoch in the settlement of the continent. 
 The Pacific slope, no less than the border lands of 
 Canada and New England, was the meeting place 
 of many an old-time jealousy ; and many political 
 currents of the great world sent their waves into 
 that distant territory. Europe and the new-born 
 republic lay behind — the immediate fountains of 
 energy ; before, was all the glamour of the ancient 
 East, to which, even yet, America could be thought 
 of as a stepping-stone. But our concern must first 
 be with the men whose unconquerable will and 
 daring were needed before any nation could lay 
 claim to the land — with the traveller and the 
 trader who were the first to scale the mighty 
 barrier of the mountains and to penetrate the 
 fertile valleys that lay beyond. 
 
 It is a singular tribute to tenacity of purpose 
 (the wish being father to the thought) that the 
 search for the North-West Passage furnished a mo- 
 tive hardly less powerful for the earliest expeditions 
 overland than for those that had been undertaken 
 by sea. The firm belief in the existence of an ice- 
 free channel did not end with the conclusive 
 voyages of Cook and Vancouver. In England 
 especially, when almost every other nation had 
 abandoned the pursuit, a stubborn confidence 
 remained. From Frobisher, Gilbert and Davis, 
 50 
 
THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE 
 
 in the sixteenth century, through Hudson, Barrow 
 and Baffin in the seventeenth, to Ross, Franklin 
 and McClintock in the nineteenth, the tradition 
 on the Atlantic seaboard had been handed on. 
 But, long before the navigator gave over the quest, 
 other agencies had been invoked. One of the most 
 frequent complaints against the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company in the eighteenth century was that it had 
 done little to develop the land acquired by its char- 
 ter, and, especially, that it had made no serious 
 effort to find a shorter route to the Pacific. Hence 
 the expeditions of Hearne, Rae, and Simpson, 
 on behalf of the company, and the discovery of the 
 Coppermine River in 1769. Hence, also, with a 
 shifting of the scene and leading actors, the historic 
 voyage of Alexander Mackenzie to the mouth of 
 the river bearing his name, and his expedition later 
 to the Pacific — efforts fruitless in so far as their 
 immediate objective was concerned, but rich be- 
 yond measure in ultimate results for his country 
 and for humanity. The subject proper of this 
 chapter may begin with Mackenzie. 
 
 It is not necessary in referring to the North-West 
 Company, whose servant Mackenzie was, to do 
 more than mention that it was organized at Mont- 
 real in 1784, and that its object was to secure the 
 trade of the remoter Indian territories without fear 
 or favour of the H udson’s Bay Company, a rival 
 with which its members were unable separately to 
 
 51 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 contend. For the nonce, success attended the ven- 
 ture ; the ancient and more powerful rival was out- 
 stripped ; and to the North-West Company fell the 
 honour of being the first to send its men into the 
 country of the Pacific slope. The company was, in 
 effect, a consolidation of the interests of a number 
 of independent merchants, trading across a territory 
 two and even three thousand miles in extent, and 
 so beset with difficulties that years often elapsed 
 between the first capture and final delivery of the 
 furs. The traffic was carried on through coureurs de 
 bois and voyageurs , that unique and ever fascinating 
 type indigenous to this continent — their home, the 
 forest and the plain ; their instincts, those of the 
 wildest nomad ; their pleasures, feasting and song ; 
 their literature — oral, as among all primitive 
 peoples — the chanson and conte ; their calling, 
 hunting and trapping, and the wielding of the 
 paddle and the axe over river and portage. Of such 
 was the domain to which the lad Mackenzie came. 
 Its dominion was the whole boundless west. 
 
 The portraits of Sir Alexander Mackenzie reveal 
 a personality in which strength of intellect and pur- 
 pose was suffused and exalted by the imagination 
 which belongs to the true artist. Without rashness or 
 impetuosity, he possessed a will and energy of the 
 most indomitable ; and his well-balanced Scottish 
 mind and his instinct for detail enabled him, without 
 danger, to cherish the greatest resolves and to risk the 
 largest undertakings. Of Stornoway parentage, he 
 52 
 
ALEXANDER MACKENZIE 
 
 early emigrated to Canada and was bound appren- 
 tice to the fur trade. At thirty-four years old, we 
 find him risen to the command of Fort Chipewyan 
 on Athabaska Lake, in the midmost of the vast 
 expanse that lies between Hudson Bay, the Arctic 
 and the Pacific. Mackenzie knew of the discover- 
 ies of Hearne and longed, both for his own and his 
 company’s fame, to rival or eclipse them. Fort 
 Chipewyan had, in fact, been built as much with 
 discovery as with trade in view. It was from this 
 point, accordingly, that he set out in 1789 to find, 
 and afterward to trace, the great river of the north 
 — the Mackenzie, as he named it in reasonable 
 pride — to its delta in the Arctic Ocean, near- 
 ly a thousand miles distant, and to satisfy him- 
 self and the world of the futility of seeking a route 
 beyond to the Atlantic. On his return, he had al- 
 ready resolved to attempt the more dangerous 
 passage westward to the Pacific, where 44 white 
 men wearing armour ” were to be met, according 
 to Indian legend, doubtless referring to Quadra’s 
 Spaniards. But the task required special prepara- 
 tion ; and Mackenzie deferred its execution until 
 he had visited England, where he made care- 
 ful study of the narratives of Cook and other 
 navigators and acquired a more perfect knowledge 
 of astronomical instruments. Thus equipped, he re- 
 turned to Western Canada. Leaving Fort Chipe- 
 wyan on October 10th, 1792, he set forth on his 
 memorable journey. 
 
 53 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 The route lay by the Peace River, nine hundred 
 miles to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where 
 Mackenzie erected a fort and spent the winter. By 
 June 12th, 1793, he had ascended that difficult 
 river to its source. Crossing the height of land, he 
 found within a mile of the Peace a small stream 
 flowing southward. This was the Tacouche Tesse, 
 afterwards the Fraser, the mouth of which was al- 
 ready known to the sailors of the Pacific, but which 
 had never been seen inland before. Mackenzie fol- 
 lowed its course in the belief that he had found the 
 long-sought river Oregon ; but learning from the 
 natives, some two hundred miles below, that a 
 shorter route to the sea could be taken overland, he 
 retraced his steps to a branch, named afterwards 
 the West Road River, and proceeded for the rest 
 of the journey on foot. On July 20th, at the 
 mouth of the Bella Coola, he came upon the Pacific. 
 
 It would be hard to overstate the difficulties and 
 dangers as well as the importance of Mackenzie’s 
 journey. As the crow flies, over a thousand miles of 
 rugged mountain and treacherous waterway lies 
 between Fort Chipewyan and the Pacific. The 
 wandering of De Soto and his Spaniards in the wild 
 country of the Gulf of Mexico, the crossing of the 
 Rockies by the Astor traders, or the famous ride of 
 Whitman from the Oregon to the city of Washing- 
 ton may equal it perhaps as feats of endurance; yet 
 the self-imposed and unflinchingly executed task of 
 Mackenzie forms a record of courage and resource- 
 54 
 
ACHIEVEMENT OF MACKENZIE 
 
 fulness such as the annals of few nations can display. 
 Geographically, the voyage was an additional blow 
 — all but the final one — at the notion of a North- 
 West Passage. Mackenzie, gazing at the Pacific after 
 the long battle with the Rockies and the wilderness, 
 is an incomparably greater figure than Balboa — nay, 
 is worthy of being named with Columbus himself. 
 He had penetrated a vast and unknown continent 
 still in a condition of untamed nature and offering 
 every obstacle of rapid river, impenetrable forest, 
 sky- towering mountain, and the extremes of a vari- 
 able climate. At every step new dangers confronted 
 him. Strange skies or the lodges of hostile savages 
 were his only roof. Tribes who had never before 
 seen white men had to be awed or conciliated. He 
 was many a time face to face with starvation and 
 with the mutiny begotten of despair. His final suc- 
 cess was almost a miracle of victory. He is his own 
 historian in a narrative that stands with that of 
 Caesar for simple dignity and plain truthfulness. 
 Napoleon had it translated into French and it be- 
 came one of his favourite books — an eminent re- 
 cognition by one master mind of the greatness 
 of another. 
 
 His body lies in the churchyard of Avoch, 
 beside that of his gifted and beautiful wife, Lady 
 Geddes Mackenzie, who survived until 1860. The 
 stone at his head bears the record of his wonderful 
 life. But his sufficient title to fame was the legend 
 roughly painted by his own hand on a rock on the 
 
 55 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 shores of the Pacific: “Alexander Mackenzie, from 
 
 CANADA, BY LAND, THE TWENTY-SECOND OF JULY, ONE 
 THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE.” 
 
 Mackenzie’s expedition was the beginning of 
 a new life for the country west of the Rocky 
 Mountains. Out of the territory which he traversed 
 in that famous journey were formed, before a 
 quarter of a century had passed, two great dis- 
 tricts — the one, New Caledonia; the other and 
 more celebrated, Oregon. These areas received 
 their titles from circumstances in themselves 
 of interest to history. Nearly all the traders 
 and proprietors of the North-West Company 
 were of Scottish birth or descent, and the region of 
 the Peace, through which the fur trade followed 
 Mackenzie, was named in honour of their rugged 
 native land. By the title of New Caledonia the 
 north-eastern portion, and often the whole, of 
 British Columbia was for a long time known. 
 Strictly speaking, the district occupied a huge 
 triangle, the base of which extended from the 
 southernmost point of Alaska to the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, containing the greater part of the present 
 districts of Cassiar and Cariboo. The rest of British 
 Columbia was included in the far extending region 
 to the south and west known as Oregon. The 
 meaning and origin of the word are wholly ob- 
 scure. Jonathan Carver, an early traveller in the 
 interior of the continent, refers in 1779 to the Oregon 
 56 
 
DAVID THOMPSON 
 
 River, of which he had heard from the natives, 
 or had read, perhaps, in the narratives of others. 
 Whether Carver invented the name, whether he 
 mistook the title current among the Indians, or 
 whether the word itself has since perished from 
 their language, remains unknown. In process of 
 time the territory westward through which the 
 river was supposed to flow came also to be known 
 as Oregon or the Oregon Territory. Some years 
 later, as we know, a river, the mouth of which had 
 previously been sighted by Heceta the Spaniard, 
 was discovered by Gray of Boston and named the 
 Columbia. Thenceforward the two names, Oregon 
 and Columbia, were applied indifferently to the 
 same vague territory. It happened, accordingly, 
 when the western boundary line between the 
 United States and Canada was fixed at the 49th 
 parallel, that the country north of it was called 
 British Columbia, to distinguish it from the por- 
 tion lying south of the line. Here, for fifty years after 
 the discoveries of Mackenzie, was the scene of action 
 of the men who made the history of the Pacific 
 coast. The day of the navigator, except as an 
 auxiliary to the fur trader and the landsman, had 
 forever passed away. 
 
 After Mackenzie, the first to enter the interior of 
 British Columbia were David Thompson and Simon 
 Fraser. Both were employees of the North-West 
 Company. Thompson, who was an astronomer, had 
 been previously in the service of the Hudson’s Bay 
 
 57 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Company, making surveys of its eastern territories. 
 After joining the rival enterprise, he had travelled 
 north and south throughout the region immediately 
 east of the Rocky Mountains, from the Peace into 
 the heart of the Mandan country, obtaining a gen- 
 eral knowledge of the inhabitants and of the state 
 of the fur trade. Combining a scientific training with 
 experience in the methods of commerce, Thompson 
 was invaluable to the company for the work in 
 which he was for so many years engaged. After 
 several ineffectual attempts to cross the mountains 
 south of Mackenzie’s point of ingress, Thompson 
 penetrated into the interior of the Bow River Pass, 
 through which the Canadian Pacific Railway now 
 enters the Rockies. This was in 1805. The hostility 
 of the natives soon after compelled his return, but 
 on a second expedition he discovered Howe’s Pass, 
 reached the Columbia River, ascended it to its 
 source, and built Fort Kootenay. Thompson, in 
 fact, stands in the highest rank among early 
 travellers in British Columbia. He was the first 
 to explore the Kootenay District ; he was the 
 discoverer of the Athabaska Pass ; he descend- 
 ed the Columbia, (and as far as the Lewis River he 
 was the first to do so,) proclaiming the sovereignty 
 of Britain at the junction of the Spokane, and all 
 but forestalling the establishment of the Astorians 
 at its mouth. But this is to anticipate somewhat. 
 Three years before Thompson had completed his 
 work in 1811 and had returned to Eastern Canada 
 58 
 
SIMON FRASER 
 
 (where he ended his days in poverty) Fraser and 
 other members of the North-West Company had 
 achieved an even more signal success in the race 
 for trade, incidentally winning for their country 
 a domain that is one of the most cherished in its 
 possession to-day. 
 
 As the result of a conference held in 1805 at Fort 
 William, the headquarters of the company, the 
 task of extending its operations to the great new 
 land discovered by Mackenzie had been assigned to 
 Simon Fraser. Ascending the Peace River from 
 Lake Athabaska, in the same season in which 
 Lewis and Clark dropped down to the mouth of 
 the Columbia and wintered there, Fraser confined 
 his first years efforts to the establishment of two 
 trading-posts on the threshold of the new domain. 
 In 1806, however, he portaged to the Tacouche 
 Tesse, later to be known bv his own name — then 
 supposed to be either the Columbia or one of its 
 tributaries — and built two forts, one on what is 
 now Stuart Lake, and a second on the river itself. 
 For still another year Fraser tarried in this region, 
 busied in the firm planting of the company’s power. 
 It was at this stage that the territory over which 
 his discoveries extended, and in which the com- 
 pany’s operations were now carried on, received the 
 definite title of New Caledonia. We may find an 
 added interest in the man and the district from 
 the fact that not many years afterwards, James 
 Douglas, then a rising officer in the Hudson’s Bay 
 
 59 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Company’s service, came upon the same scene, 
 and was one of the most active in the district of 
 which Fraser laid the foundations. 
 
 But the crowning achievement of Fraser was to 
 follow. What matter if the spur that pricked him 
 on was the jealousy of rival traders? The fame of 
 the voyage of Lewis and Clark had made clear to 
 the North-West Company how immediate was the 
 need of anticipating another on the north-west coast. 
 Acting on instructions from headquarters, an expe- 
 dition was fitted out in New Caledonia with the ob- 
 ject of extending the company’s rule at once to the 
 Pacific. Three men, whose names are forever pre- 
 served in the annals of the Pacific slope, — Simon 
 Fraser, John Stuart and Jules Maurice Quesnel, — 
 with a crew of twenty-one, nineteen of whom were 
 voyageurs , embarked on the undertaking. They 
 were in four canoes, and the stream whose unknown 
 reaches lay before them was the Fraser. Those only 
 who have seen the tremendous rapids and cascades, 
 the precipitous side walls and the thousand other 
 dangers of that splendid river, can appreciate the 
 nature of the task that confronted them. The Fraser 
 has been described as a ragged gash in the moun- 
 tains, by which, in ages gone by, the waters of a 
 great interior sea burst through their barriers of rock 
 to the ocean. The modern traveller gazes in wonder 
 at the thread-like trail cut into the face of the over- 
 hanging cliffs, by which at dizzy heights the railway 
 traces the yawning canyons through which the river 
 60 
 
DESCENT OF THE FRASER 
 
 hurls itself forward, and is lost in admiration at the 
 daring of the men who carved its tortuous way 
 along the mountains. Even greater was the 
 task of Fraser and his men, who for the first 
 time, without landmark to guide them or know- 
 ledge of the country of any kind, and beset by 
 hostile natives, followed the river throughout its 
 length from source to mouth, a distance of seven 
 hundred and fifty miles. Fort George, the point of 
 departure, was left on May, 28th 1808; the journey 
 to tide water was completed on July 1st. To the 
 sea itself Fraser was prevented by the natives from 
 penetrating. Returning, the party arrived at Fort 
 George on August 6th. Thus was accomplished the 
 second epoch-making feat of exploration in British 
 Columbia. It was only less notable than that of 
 Mackenzie himself. The latter had demonstrated 
 that it was possible, though at a fearful price, to 
 reach the Pacific overland. Fraser had proved that 
 the river he had descended was not the Columbia, 
 but an independent stream which fell into the sea 
 over seven degrees further north. 
 
 It is necessary now to turn to the phase in the 
 development of the Pacific coast which more than 
 all others influenced its political destiny. And here 
 it will be well to define somewhat the rela- 
 tive positions of Great Britain and the United 
 States with respect to the sovereignty of the western 
 continent at the end of the eighteenth century. 
 
 61 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Up to this time, no nation, certainly neither of 
 the two in question, had established any absolute 
 claim to the country north of Lower California. 
 Drake had harried the Spaniards, and had taken 
 possession of the Californian coast in the name of 
 Elizabeth; British navigators, also, had in later 
 times done more than those of any other nation 
 to determine the northern shore line and to make 
 it known to the world. Spain had to all intents 
 abandoned the field. On the other hand, the 
 United States could claim with justice to have 
 solved the mystery of the Great River of the W est. 
 As yet, moreover, there had been no actual oc- 
 cupation of Nootka, and only a nominal possession 
 of Vancouver Island, by Great Britain. The situa- 
 tion, therefore, was chaotic. About the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century, however, a number of 
 events combined to create an interest in the coun- 
 try west of the Rocky Mountains that commanded 
 order to arise. The question, to which of the 
 two Anglo-Saxon nations the Oregon territory be- 
 longed, was slowly formulating itself. 
 
 At first its utterance was no more than a whis- 
 per — a passing word in the halls of diplomacy and 
 state. Forty years before, the capture of Quebec 
 and the subsequent cession of Canada to England 
 had changed the face of politics on the continent. 
 To this had succeeded the American revolution, a 
 counter-change still more momentous. The new 
 conditions, however, did not make themselves felt 
 62 
 
THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 
 
 at once in the western country. It was not, in fact, 
 until 1803 , that any echo of the great events that 
 had happened on the Atlantic was heard on the 
 Pacific. It came then as the result of very special 
 circumstances. In 1762 , Spain had ceded to France 
 in perpetuity the whole of the territory of Louisi- 
 ana. There has already been occasion to remark the 
 vagueness of the region included in that compre- 
 hensive term. In the cession of 1762 , no attempt 
 was made to dispel the uncertainty; and indeed it 
 would have been impossible. In the following year, 
 a treaty which considerably modified this arrange- 
 ment was concluded between France and Spain on 
 the one hand, and Great Britain and Portugal on 
 the other, but again not a word was included as to 
 the eastern or western limits of Louisiana, though 
 Great Britain was granted Canada, Florida and the 
 portion of Louisiana “ east of the line drawn along 
 the Mississippi from its source to the River Iber- 
 ville, thence along the middle of the Iberville and 
 the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea.” 
 In the course of events, the territory was again 
 ceded back to France in 1800 , and in 1803 passed 
 by purchase into the possession of the United 
 States. Immediately the question of its boundaries 
 arose, this time with an insistence that demanded 
 an answer. Did they extend west of the Missis- 
 sippi? Did they embrace the whole of the interior 
 plateau to the foot of the Rocky Mountains? Did 
 they extend to the ocean ? If so, for how far north 
 
 63 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 and south ? What were the southern limits of 
 British territory? To its earlier possessors, Louisiana 
 had been a word and little more; to the United 
 States it was the gateway to a golden future. Spain 
 and Great Britain were the other nations affect- 
 ed, as the possessors of contiguous territory to 
 the south and north. Spain on the one hand 
 claimed the whole of the . territory west of the 
 Mississippi, to which the United States opposed 
 a counter claim to an enormous portion of the 
 coast of the Mexican Gulf. As against Great 
 Britain, the view held was that the 49th parallel of 
 latitude marked the southern limit of British pos- 
 session. Both of these disputes were postponed for 
 settlement from time to time with results unfor- 
 tunate to British interests. 
 
 Varying estimates have been placed upon the 
 character of Thomas Jefferson, author of the De- 
 claration of Independence, and third president of 
 the United States. Whether as a result of Jeffer- 
 son’s personal initiative or of the foresight of his 
 advisers, several notable events occurred within 
 the period of his influence to determine the trend 
 of circumstances unfavourably to British interests 
 beyond the Mississippi. These were: the acquisition 
 of Louisiana, for which Napoleon was paid the 
 sum of $15,000,000; the expedition of Lewis and 
 Clark to the mouth of the Columbia River; and 
 the founding of Astoria by the Astor Fur Com- 
 pany. Whoever pointed the way, the foundation 
 64 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 was laid in these events for the expansion of 
 the republic across the Mississippi and beyond 
 the Rocky Mountains. While the great mass 
 of the people cared nothing for the west, there 
 were a few who realized its possibilities. Jeffer- 
 son was undoubtedly one of the latter. Projecting 
 his vision into the future, he saw the hosts of settlers 
 pressing further and further west — beyond the Alle- 
 ghanies ; across the Ohio and the Mississippi ; along 
 the valleys of the mighty rivers which rise among 
 the foothills of the Rockies ; overcoming finally the 
 Rockies themselves, and surging down into the 
 valleys of the Pacific slope ; blazing trails that were 
 to become national highroads; building homes, 
 towns and cities; carving out new states of the 
 republic. He saw the possibility of adding another 
 and larger empire to the thirteen states. He saw 
 and he acted. He had read of the overland journey 
 of Mackenzie; he knew that the British flag was be- 
 ing carried by the fur traders across the continent in 
 the north ; and he realized not only the possibilities 
 that lay in the fur trade, but that, in the time to 
 come, settled industry would follow the march of 
 the fur brigades, and the solitude of the forest and 
 the plain be broken by the voices of civilization. 
 
 In the meantime, and while the dream was 
 forming in his mind, the territory of a foreign 
 nation intervened. This obstacle removed, the 
 genius of the American people, it was thought, 
 might be trusted to do the rest. But the Louisiana 
 
 65 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 purchase did not fully accomplish the end that 
 Jefferson had in view. The added claim of explora- 
 tion was still lacking. It was to establish this that 
 Jefferson now equipped the second great expedi- 
 tion to cross the continent. Lewis and Clark, two 
 experienced frontiersmen, were placed in command. 
 As the journey was long and hazardous, and the 
 territory through which it lay unknown, the presi- 
 dent took the utmost care to provide against every 
 contingency. The objective was the mouth of the 
 Columbia, to the credit of discovering which the 
 United States already laid claim; but it was by no 
 means certain where the expedition would end. If 
 the Pacific were reached at all, it might be in Span- 
 ish, British or Russian territory. The impression 
 was accordingly conveyed that the expedition was 
 in the interests of science and literature alone, and 
 to this end the cooperation of the other nations 
 was sought and obtained. The leaders were sup- 
 plied with passports by the representatives of the 
 powers at Washington, so that they might travel 
 without hindrance through foreign territory, and 
 were furnished besides with letters of credit for use 
 in foreign ports. At the same time a confidential 
 message was despatched to congress disclosing 
 the real object of the enterprise, which was to 
 strengthen the claim of the United States to the 
 distant west against the day of settling the re- 
 spective titles of the nations having interests 
 between the Mississippi and the Pacific. The 
 66 
 
LEWIS AND CLARK 
 
 ruse was in every detail successful. Not only were 
 the necessary funds forthcoming ; but the repre- 
 sentatives of the foreign powers at Washing- 
 ton vied with each other in rendering their as- 
 sistance. The details of this famous expedition 
 are not germane to the present narrative. It 
 was thoroughly equipped, though costing only 
 $2,500; it consisted of forty-five persons; the start- 
 ing-point was St. Louis and the actual distance 
 travelled amounted to about one-third of the 
 circumference of the globe. The route lay from 
 Illinois through regions since known as Missouri, 
 Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, 
 Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The main water- 
 ways followed on the eastern side of the moun- 
 tains were the Missouri and the Yellowstone; and 
 on the Pacific side, the Lewis, the Kooskooskee, 
 and the Columbia. The continental divide was 
 surmounted in three places, many miles apart. 
 Though great hardships were often encountered, 
 and sometimes suffering and immediate peril, there 
 was but one life lost. The expedition occupied over 
 two years, from May, 1804 until August, 1806, 
 during which time all communication with the 
 outside world was suspended and an immense mass 
 of exact information respecting this hitherto unex- 
 plored territory was made available. Lewis and Clark 
 wintered at Fort Clatsop, on the Pacific Coast. 
 This great expedition, so successfully brought to 
 an end, was not the only one that Jefferson had in 
 
 67 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 mind; but the futile mission of John Ledyard to 
 Russia and the ignoble ending of the project of 
 Andr£ Michaux, for which Lewis volunteered, call 
 for no special comment. In the light of events, it is 
 unnecessary to emphasize the momentous conse- 
 quences which flowed from the Louisiana purchase 
 and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Seldom has 
 appreciation more acute of the greatness of an 
 opportunity been seen in history; seldom has the 
 wisdom that divined possessed the power to ex- 
 ecute in equal measure. Jefferson was the proto- 
 type of American diplomacy; Lewis and Clark 
 were the prototypes of the men who followed its 
 voice and reaped its harvest. 
 
 The logical sequel of the journey of Lewis and 
 Clark was the formation in 1810 of the Pacific 
 Fur Company by John Jacob Astor of New York. 
 The organization has been made a name in litera- 
 ture by Washington Irving. Astor had risen from 
 humble circumstances to great wealth and political 
 influence. He was the friend of Jefferson, and the 
 project of extending the territory of the United 
 States westward, doubtless owed much to his 
 encouragement. Appreciating to the full, from his 
 intimate association with the fur trade, the value to 
 commerce of the territory west of the Mississippi, 
 Astor s ambition was to obtain for himself a sphere 
 of influence in the United States similar to that 
 possessed by the North-West and Hudsons Bay 
 Companies in British America. Not less anxious 
 68 
 
THE PACIFIC FUR COMPANY 
 
 was he, for the same reason, to see the 49th paral- 
 lel extended to the Pacific Ocean as the dividing 
 line between the two countries. There can be little 
 question that when the Lewis and Clark expedi- 
 tion was decided upon, it was with the entire con- 
 currence of Astor. From Irving, who deals at 
 length with Astor ’s aims and methods, we learn of 
 the close relationship which existed between him 
 and the administration; it is not, therefore, far 
 to seek for the inspiration of Jefferson’s policy. 
 Astor, the rival of the British fur companies, was 
 the only man of his time who had an overpowering 
 self-interest in extending the United States west- 
 ward to the Pacific. 
 
 The Pacific Fur Company was not the first or- 
 ganization of its kind, but it was the first which 
 carried out its aims in accordance with a compre- 
 hensive plan combined with practical business exper- 
 ience and ability. The operations which it immedi- 
 ately set on foot partook of the nature of a national 
 effort to counterbalance the success of the British 
 companies and divert the fur trade from Montreal 
 to New York. Thus, though its object was in the 
 main a business one, it had, at the same time, 
 many features that appealed to wider sympathy 
 and support. The main features of Astor ’s pro- 
 ject, as embodied in his company, involved the 
 establishment of a line of posts along the Mis- 
 souri and the Columbia to the mouth of the latter, 
 where the chief trading d^pot of the company was 
 
 69 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 to be situated. Subsidiary posts were to be set up 
 in the interior and on the tributary streams of the 
 Columbia to trade with the Indians; these would 
 draw their supplies from the main establishment 
 and bring to it the peltries they collected. Coasting 
 vessels would be built and fitted out on the Col- 
 umbia, to trade, at favourable seasons, along the 
 north-west coast, and to return with the proceeds of 
 their voyages to the place of deposit. In this way 
 the entire Indian trade, both of the interior and of 
 the coast, would converge at the mouth of the 
 Columbia. A ship was to be sent annually from 
 New York with reinforcements, supplies, and mer- 
 chandise suited to the trade. It would take on 
 board the furs collected during the preceding year, 
 carry them to Canton, invest the proceeds in the 
 rich stuffs of China, and return thus freighted to 
 New York. What was of importance in the scheme 
 was the development of trade with the Russian 
 establishments on the north-west coast. This sug- 
 gested many possibilities. As a preliminary step, 
 a staff experienced in the Indian trade and inured 
 to life in the wilderness was necessary. This was 
 recruited in Montreal. Three prominent employees 
 of the North-West Company were among those 
 who accepted the terms of Astor. A personal 
 representative and chief agent was appointed. The 
 Pacific Fur Company was then formally incorpor- 
 ated and the work of organization perfected to 
 its final details. 
 
 70 
 
ASTORIA 
 
 The expedition which it was determined at once 
 to send out for the realization of these plans was 
 divided into two parties ; one to proceed in the 
 ship Tonqidn by way of Cape Horn to the 
 Columbia ; the other to follow in the footsteps 
 of Lewis and Clark across the continent. The 
 quarrels of the members of the party on the Ton- 
 quin with her captain ; the final loss of the Ton- 
 quin and the murder of her crew by the natives at 
 Clayoquot ; the sending of a second ship from 
 New York ; and the terrible sufferings of the over- 
 land party under Hunt, are familiar history. The 
 establishment of Astoria and its varying fortunes 
 need not detain us here. By a series of mishaps it 
 soon passed into the possession of the North- 
 West Company. Irving assigns the failure of 
 the enterprise primarily to the loyalty of the 
 employees to Great Britain and their former 
 masters the North-West Company. There is force 
 possibly in the contention. The final blow was 
 the War of 1812. When peace was declared, Fort 
 Astoria was ceded back to the United States, 
 though without prejudice to the rights of Great 
 Britain to the territory in which it was situated. 
 The Pacific Fur Company, however, made no 
 further attempt to carry out the projects of 
 Astor ; and the North-West Company, and sub- 
 sequently the Hudsons Bay Company, continued 
 in virtual occupation of the fort until the settle- 
 ment of the boundary dispute in 1846. The 
 
 71 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 abiding importance of the experiment lies in the 
 fact that the occupation of the Columbia by the 
 Astorians was put forward at the time of the settle- 
 ment of the boundary question as one of the strong- 
 est claims in behalf of the United States. This in- 
 ternational aspect of the case will be referred to 
 later in the present volume. 
 
 It may be well to recapitulate in proper sequence 
 the five great transcontinental expeditions of these 
 early times as follows: — (1) The expedition of Alex- 
 ander Mackenzie, by the Tacouche Tesse and Bella 
 Coola Rivers, in 1793. (2) The expedition of Lewis 
 and Clark, by the Missouri and the Columbia Riv- 
 ers, in 1805. (3) The expedition of Simon Fraser, 
 by the river which bears his name, formerly the 
 Tacouche Tesse, in 1808. (4) The expedition of 
 David Thompson, by the Columbia River, in 1811. 
 (5) The overland expedition of the Astorians in 
 1811. Among the most glorious in the history of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race, these great achievements must, 
 for the moment, be remembered in their special and 
 less happy significance: as shedding light upon the 
 bitter rivalry which was to follow — of which indeed 
 they were already the beginning — between the 
 mother and the daughter countries for the continent 
 so dauntlessly won for their common civilization. 
 
 It has now been shown, however briefly, by what 
 steps the Pacific coast first became known to the 
 world ; and it has been noted, also, how the over- 
 72 
 
THE HUDSONS BAY COMPANY 
 
 land explorer completed the work of the navigator. 
 The fur trader, it has been seen, was the first to 
 enter the new country as other than a spy or 
 adventurer, and his forts and depots were the first 
 roofs, as his trafficking with the Indians was the 
 first act of commerce, in the great interior. The re- 
 mainder of this chapter may be fitly devoted to a 
 statement of certain broad and salient features in 
 the life and methods of this striking type as it 
 existed during the first fifty years of the last cen- 
 tury. These were the days of the trader in the full 
 flush of his glory, and the recital of his leading 
 characteristics, however familiar, is necessary to 
 give a background to the succeeding narrative. In 
 this it will be understood that the reference 
 throughout is to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which 
 in 1821, after a struggle which had ended in armed 
 hostilities and the effusion of blood, absorbed the 
 North-West Company, and from that time forward, 
 retaining only what seemed best in its former con- 
 stituent bodies, completely dominated the trade and 
 the life of the western country. 
 
 How the great enterpise — “ the Governor , and 
 Company of Adventurers of England trading into 
 Hudson’s Bay,” — came to birth in the revival of 
 mercantile activity which followed the restoration of 
 King Charles II ; how Rupert, Prince of England 
 and Bohemia, dashing cavalier and patron of com- 
 merce, became its founder ; how the powers con- 
 
 73 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 ferred upon it in that lavish age included, in addi- 
 tion to the “ whole, entire and only liberty of 
 Trade and Traffick,” the absolute ownership of a 
 third part of North America, with authority to 
 frame laws, administer justice, wage war or make 
 peace therein ; how its early servants planted its 
 rule on the edge of the wilderness amid difficulties 
 that would have driven back any but the most 
 determined of men ; how through a century and a 
 half of steady progress — of bloody wars with the 
 French, implacable rivalries with other traders, 
 thrilling adventures and vicissitudes innumerable — 
 it drove its purposes to a victorious end, sending out 
 its explorers on journeys that gave a new face to 
 the continent, naming some of the greatest rivers 
 and mountains of the earth, spreading step by step 
 the arteries of its trade and the empire of its flag 
 over thousands of miles, and over thousands of souls; 
 civilizing sometimes, corrupting and degrading 
 often, bartering continually ; — all these varied and 
 commanding activities combine to form an episode 
 unrivalled for the romantic and the picturesque in 
 our history. 
 
 The general system under which the company 
 carried on its multiform and far-extending business 
 has been many times described. In the manner in 
 which it adapted means to ends it could have little 
 to learn from the largest enterprise of modern days. 
 The minuteness of the trade and the tremendous 
 distances which it traversed rendered necessary a 
 74 
 
THE FUR TRADE 
 
 method of accounting, at once the most elaborate 
 and exact. For organization purposes, the vast 
 dominions of the company were divided into four 
 great departments. These were again divided into 
 districts. Each district had its fixed and permanent 
 trading-posts, as well as a number of temporary or 
 flying stations, the latter frequently the precursors 
 of the former. Here were the vital points of con- 
 tact between the company and the trade from 
 which it drew its life’s blood : here the traders met 
 and bartered with the Indians. Important posts or 
 parties, together with the transportation service, 
 were in the charge of chief clerks ; a l^wer grade of 
 employees managed the outlying stations. The dis- 
 tricts were under the chief traders. In the depart- 
 ments, depots and distributing points were presided 
 over by the factors, while over all the chief factor 
 bore rule. An army of postmasters, interpreters, 
 mechanics, guides, canoemen and apprentices made 
 up the rank and file, though even here degrees were 
 strictly recognized. In general terms, the service 
 was made up of three classes ; the servants, the clerks 
 and apprentices, and the officers. The second class 
 sat at the officers’ mess and were addressed as gentle- 
 men. But the officers were the real oligarchy, bound 
 by special covenant to fidelity, and receiving their 
 reward not in salary but in a share of the company’s 
 profits. Subject to the orders of his superior and 
 the regulations of the company, each officer was 
 supreme in his sphere of duty. The system, as will 
 ^ 75 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 be seen, was military in its absolutism. The chief 
 factor was lord paramount ; his word was law, to 
 support and symbolize which the office was en- 
 veloped in a halo of dignity. When a chief factor 
 transacted the most ordinary business, his habili- 
 ments were elaborate and imposing ; when he 
 travelled, it was in state, with a retinue by whom 
 he was lifted in and out of his conveyance, his 
 arrivals and departures heralded by the firing of 
 salutes. High above all reigned the governor of the 
 company, a personage scarcely less exalted than the 
 most absolute of sovereigns, owing allegiance to no 
 one save the directorate in London, whose policy, 
 as a matter of necessity, was largely dictated by his 
 advice. Great indeed was the majesty that hedged 
 about a governor of the company. But the show was 
 no greater than the reality, though part of a deli- 
 berate plan to overawe the natives and subordinates 
 where rebellion or mutiny would have meant ex- 
 tinction. It succeeded in so far as the immediate 
 object was concerned ; but, as examples show, it had 
 sometimes an unhappy effect upon the ruler. 
 
 The company’s W estern Department, with which 
 the present narrative has chiefly to do, included the 
 entire region between the watershed of the Rocky 
 Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, bounded on the 
 north by Russian territory and the Northern De- 
 partment (the latter embracing the country drained 
 by the rivers running into the Arctic Ocean and 
 Behring Sea) and on the south by the Mexican 
 76 
 
FORT VANCOUVER 
 
 republic. Roughly, it extended a thousand miles 
 in length, by half that distance in average width. 
 The depot for the department was, in the early 
 days, at Fort Vancouver, a post of considerable size 
 (its stockade measuring 750 feet in length by 600 
 feet in breadth) situated on % the Columbia River 
 six miles above its junction with the Willamette. 
 Afterwards it was removed to Victoria. Here the 
 company’s goods were received from abroad for 
 distribution throughput the coast and the interior. 
 Here were collected the furs as they were sent in 
 by the traders for subsequent transportation to 
 England around Cape Horn. Here, too, were the 
 headquarters of the chief factor and the heart of 
 the official life of the region. While Fort Van- 
 couver remained the depot for a period of some 
 twenty-three years, the districts north of the 
 Columbia landed their supplies at the mouth of 
 the Okanagan, and packed them on horses thence 
 to their destination. For the service of the 
 other districts, lying nearer the coast, the furs and 
 goods were carried to and from the Fraser River. 
 Goods for the Upper Columbia and Koote- 
 nay were landed at Fort Colville near the Rocky 
 Mountains ; those for the Snake River were landed 
 at Walla Walla. The former became in time the 
 centre of all the trade on the Columbia — the last 
 post touched at by the brigades on their long jour- 
 ney from Fort Vancouver to Norway House. The 
 coast ports were supplied by sailing vessels, the 
 
 77 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 returning boats and vessels bringing in the furs 
 collected at the several ports. The trade in New 
 Caledonia, and in what is now known as the 
 Yukon in the Northern Department, was carried 
 on by way of the Athabaska route, of which the 
 forts on Hudson Bay were the entrepots . 
 
 The activity of the company in the Western 
 Department was by no means restricted to the 
 trade in peltries. In process of time, large farms 
 were established in the vicinity of Victoria, on 
 Puget Sound, in the Willamette valley and in 
 other parts of the country. The trade in horses, 
 cattle, sheep, pigs and general farm produce, soon 
 attained importance. The erection of grist mills, 
 sawmills, tanneries and dairies followed. A con- 
 siderable fishing industry sprang up. Within a few 
 years, the ships of the company were regularly 
 exporting flour, grain, beef, pork and butter to the 
 Russian settlements in Alaska and Siberia, lumber 
 and fish to the Sandwich Islands, and hides and 
 wool to England. The company was the first to 
 open the coal mines of Vancouver Island, at Fort 
 Rupert first and later at Nanaimo. The wants of 
 its own communities and of the vessels of the coast 
 furnished the original incentive; but the sale of a 
 thousand tons to a vessel bound for California, 
 during the height of the mining excitement, proved 
 the inauguration of a trade that has since become 
 of first importance to the district. It was, in fact, 
 the proportions reached by the general commerce 
 78 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 of the department, even at an early stage of its 
 development, and the industries thus founded 
 and nourished, that first attracted the attention 
 of the outside world to the potentialities of the 
 Pacific coast, the result being a gradual process 
 of settlement that eventually extinguished the 
 company’s rule. The debt that is owing to the 
 men who were the first to recognize in the natural 
 resources of the country still greater possibilities 
 than existed in the gathering of peltries — even 
 though they could not clearly foresee the effect 
 that was to follow for the company whose servants 
 they were — is one that could not easily be over- 
 estimated. Had they followed tamely in the foot- 
 steps of precedent ; had they lacked sagacity to per- 
 ceive the wealth that lay in the fertile valleys, the 
 teeming rivers and the timber-clad hillsides of the 
 vast dominion whose present destiny they shaped 
 at will, they might have purchased for the great 
 master of their allegiance a few doubtful years of 
 the power to barter “ skin for skin ” ; but they 
 would have thrown back the progress of the coast 
 at least a quarter of a century, and they would 
 have missed the opportunity of conferring upon 
 their country a boon far beyond the gift of any 
 corporation bound to a single and narrow circle 
 of activity. 
 
 A word may be added as to the treatment ac- 
 corded by the company to the Incftans^-its equals 
 in trade, its benefactors even, but with all the 
 
 ^ 79 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 pathetic helplessness of an inferior race. There can 
 be no doubt that the company was, before every- 
 thing else, a keen trader. It took the Indian as it 
 found him — and it kept him so. To be a hunter and 
 a wanderer was the Indian’s nature ; he would have 
 been useless to the company had he been other- 
 wise. There was no effort, accordingly, to civilize 
 him, — none, for almost two centuries, to christianize 
 him. But he received justice — or what he thought 
 was justice — even kindness, dictated though both 
 were by policy. To gain the Indian’s confidence was 
 a necessity of the trade ; and the company made sure 
 of this. In two centuries of rule over tribes of every 
 shade of racial difference, ranging from the Eskimos 
 of the Labrador and Arctic coasts, through the Crees, 
 Sioux and Blackfeet of the interior, to the polyglot 
 chaos of tribes that dwelt along the Pacific Ocean, 
 war was unknown and violence and bloodshed only 
 an occasional incident. Thousands of miles from any 
 force of arms, trade was carried on in scores of factor- 
 ies in perfect trust. The coast tribes of the W estern 
 Department were perhaps more truculent and ex- 
 citable than any on the continent, yet here as else- 
 where Indian outrage was comparatively unknown. 
 The manner in which intercourse between the trader 
 and the Indian was held had much to do with 
 this result. Respect was always paid to fairness in 
 exchange. Docile as the Indian was, and avid of the 
 goods that made his barren existence happier, this 
 was no difficult task. In other respects an equal dis- 
 80 
 
THE INDIANS 
 
 cretion was displayed. The relations established 
 were ever those of reserve ; familiarity was per- 
 mitted on no pretext, though firmness was temper- 
 ed with tact, courtesy and the constant expression 
 of good-will. The frequent intermarriages of traders 
 with native women did much to secure the good 
 feeling of the Indian, and to further the interests 
 of the company. That some of the traders were 
 profligate must be admitted ; that rum found its 
 way into the trade has been proved ; but in these, 
 as in other matters, the law of self-preservation was 
 the constant monitor of the company. In the sum- 
 ming up, history will accord thanks to the company 
 for the fruits of its attitude towards the Indian. 
 Without that preparation of the Indian mind, the 
 peaceful settlement of the country would have been 
 impossible. When the hour of the fur trade had 
 struck and the settler stood at the gateway of the 
 mountains, he found a native race subdued to 
 the methods of the white man, and ready to play 
 its part in the new order. The Indian is to-day a 
 more important factor in the labour market of 
 British Columbia than of any other portion of 
 the Dominion. 
 
 Of the life that went on beneath the extraordin- 
 ary surface of the company’s system and policy, 
 who could give even a glimpse in a page ? It was a 
 world in itself, so romantic and full of wonders that 
 every fireside has listened to the story of it. Over half 
 a continent it embraced scenes the most varied and 
 
 81 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 sublime on the earth — the forest growth of ages, 
 pathless and impenetrable ; the endless prairie, 
 roamed by millions of bison ; mountain lands 
 unrivalled for wildness and grandeur ; all alike in- 
 terlaced by one of the most beautiful and majestic 
 chains of waterways in the world, running down in- 
 to the everlasting sea which bore the company’s 
 trade to its ultimate markets. Dotting the wilder- 
 ness, hundreds of miles apart, were the “ forts ” or 
 trading-posts of the company, whence it drew sus- 
 tenance and by which it kept its grasp upon the 
 land. Even these were stamped with individuality. 
 Built, large and small, upon a common plan — a low 
 and quadrangular centre structure surrounded by 
 high palisades, flanked by bastions and defended by 
 six-and twelve-pounders — they aptly proclaimed the 
 rigour that ruled within. This was no less than 
 martial law, to transgress which was punished with 
 swift and ruthless severity, and from which the only 
 seasons of respite came at Christmas and the New 
 Y ear, or on the days, many months apart, on which 
 news and letters were brought from the outside 
 world — sunbursts of joy that made their recurrence 
 the chief solace of an existence unparalleled for 
 monotony and isolation. The brigades were the 
 agents of this beneficence, the tie that bound the 
 forts together, and constituted the veins and arteries 
 of the system. In summer they came with goods in 
 “ York boats,” — nine tripmen to each, and eight 
 boats to the brigade, — or by cart and cayuse over 
 82 
 
LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 the prairie ; in winter they brought only letters 
 and newspapers by sledge and snowshoe, the gaily 
 caparisoned dog trains making forty miles a day 
 over the snow, sheltering under trees and bushes, 
 and covering once a year the entire round of 
 the company’s trading-posts. But the real bond 
 of union was the comradeship of the service which 
 laid its spell (or its terror) upon all, the essence 
 of which, for rude and polished alike, was its 
 touch upon the aboriginal and the elemental in 
 both wild and human nature. In such a setting, life 
 took on varied forms. The man of mighty will 
 turned all to power, triumphing over difficulties 
 that subdued and appalled others, and rose because 
 he could do nothing else. Others in whom the flame 
 burned less fiercely, adapted themselves to their 
 surroundings and hewed out paths of useful effort. 
 Others were broken utterly, consuming their hearts 
 in the awful toil and loneliness until death or mad- 
 ness came. 
 
 The roll of honour in the company’s western 
 service is a long and illustrious one. From 1805 to 
 1846, and in British Columbia until 1858, the fur 
 trader ruled on the coast. It was not an ab- 
 solute sway: the settler arrived early to dispute 
 it; and the half-century was one of conflict and 
 evolution. Simpson, Ogden, Ermatinger, McDon- 
 ald, McLeod, Tod, Yale, Dallas, Finlayson, Ander- 
 son, Black, McKay, Ross, Campbell, Murray, Dease, 
 Rae, Tolmie, Graham e, are some of those who bore 
 
 83 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 a share, in the early and formative period, in direct- 
 ing the energies and moulding the destinies of the 
 country, each in his own field and method. Their 
 impress can never be obliterated. But from the list 
 of all that generation two names stand out preem- 
 inently in the history of the upbuilding of the 
 Pacific Slope — McLoughlin and Douglas. Occa- 
 sion more than once will be offered in the follow- 
 ing pages to note the striking personality of the 
 former of these great men. He was the founder 
 and the patriarch — the first great leader of the 
 company in Oregon. He made the career of 
 Douglas, who was his friend and follower, possible. 
 The superior of his disciple in all that touched 
 the human and the lovable ; magnetic, impul- 
 sive, eager; Napoleonic in the swiftness of his 
 judgments and of his movements to execute 
 them ; resolute, brave and chivalrous, McLough- 
 lin was swept from his feet in the end by a 
 movement that struck at his emotions and his sense 
 of right — the right of the mass as opposed to that 
 of an individual interest. He could not, or he would 
 not, stem the tide of settlement from the United 
 States, so fatal to the company’s and, as it proved, 
 to his country’s future. And when, in 1846, the 
 land north of the Columbia to the 49th parallel 
 passed to the United States, he went with it, 
 divorced from an allegiance to which his whole life 
 had been devoted. Douglas, his successor, less keen 
 and restless; of an order of genius that had less 
 84 
 
McLOUGHLIN AND DOUGLAS 
 
 perhaps of fire and humanity but more of purpose 
 and obedience; studious, orderly, tactful and re- 
 sourceful; commanding a rigid respect and admira- 
 tion, if not love; one at all times master of him- 
 self and his surroundings, was undoubtedly the 
 greater officer, if not the greater man. Of the 
 two, Douglas must always remain of larger 
 interest to the historian. He came into command 
 at a moment of supreme importance in the period 
 of rapid transition from old to new conditions, for 
 which McLoughlin had opened the door. Un- 
 shackled by doubts of any kind, he was in a special 
 degree qualified to deal with developments which 
 he could not wholly control, but which he could 
 influence powerfully in the direction of the com- 
 pany's interests, while at the same time clearly 
 foreseeing that they must result in a new order 
 wherein the company would cease to be a ruling 
 factor. It was in truth to this last point that the 
 enterprise of the fur trader in building forts to be 
 the centres of future settlement; in opening lines 
 of communication throughout the interior to be 
 the avenues of future commerce ; and in the bring- 
 ing of ships to the coast depots to establish in- 
 tercourse with the outside world, inevitably con- 
 verged. Even a less clear-sighted observer than 
 Douglas could not but see in the movements which 
 drove the company out of Oregon and which planted 
 a colony in the valley of the Red River, something 
 that portended the ultimate extinction of its 
 
 85 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 sovereignty in the west and the erection of popu- 
 lar government in its stead. Of never-fading in- 
 terest in themselves the lives of the traders in the 
 wilds of the interior and on the shores of the Paci- 
 fic must always remain. That strange and varied 
 period is a subject, probably, of which the ground 
 has been no more than broken. McLoughlin was 
 of it, and his lamp was extinguished when the 
 trade passed away. Douglas too was of it, blood 
 and bone; but he was something more. As has 
 been said, our interest in the fur trade is for the 
 fruits it bore in subsequent history. We have to 
 watch its huge and tireless mechanism as, in 
 measured process, James Douglas, the most no- 
 table figure which it produced in the country west 
 of the Rocky Mountains, rose step by step to the 
 post of chief command, thence, by the inevitable 
 sequence of events, as the company gave place to 
 civil government, to become the first representative 
 of the Crown in a British colony on the Pacific 
 Ocean. 
 
 86 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 NEW CALEDONIA 
 ONCERNING the early life of Sir James 
 
 Douglas, little is known. He was not in his 
 youth a keeper of diaries, and there are few records 
 of the long period of his apprenticeship to the 
 North-West and Hudson’s Bay Companies, prior 
 to his assumption of command at Fort Vancouver. 
 The generation which knew him in the flesh has 
 passed away. In the family circle he was not a 
 purveyor of official small news. Neither was he 
 given to reminiscence or to talk of himself or of 
 his exploits. When he passed from the scene he did 
 not leave behind him a single purely personal record 
 either of his actions or of the opinions and early 
 experiences on which they were based . 1 
 
 This might at first appear remarkable in a man 
 who at all times so fully recognized the importance 
 of his position in so far as mere forms were con- 
 cerned. How seriously he could consider this 
 aspect is well illustrated in a letter which he wrote 
 in May, 1859, to the governor of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company. It was evident that he could not occupy 
 the dual position of governor of the Pacific colonies 
 and representative of the company, and it was 
 necessary, therefore, that he should retire from the 
 
 1 A journal kept by Douglas at Fort Vancouver, quoted by Bancroft, 
 lias disappeared. 
 
 87 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 service of the latter. This he was willing to do, con- 
 ditional on the payment of £3,500 as a retiring 
 interest : 
 
 “In the event of the rejection of that offer [he 
 wrote], I must resign my office of governor, as the 
 salary offered, £1,800 per annum, is altogether 
 inadequate to my support in a becoming manner. 
 
 “As a private individual I can live in a style 
 befitting the fortune I possess; but as governor 
 for the Crown, there is no choice : one must live in 
 a manner becoming the representative of the 
 Crown, and I could never consent to represent 
 Her Majesty in a shabby way.” 
 
 The fact is that the manner of a chief factor 
 clung to him to the last in governmental, com- 
 pany, and domestic relations. This was second na- 
 ture to all Hudson’s Bay Company officials. Doug- 
 las, however, was to an exceptional degree steeped 
 in the ceremonial of official life, and the fact has led 
 to not a little misinterpretation of his character. 
 The fondness of display and the autocratic methods 
 with which he has been charged were in fact the 
 natural outcome of his long and devoted service to 
 an organization famed the world over for its iron 
 discipline, joined to the trait which he displayed 
 from first to last of taking high and serious ground 
 even in small things. His early training, acting 
 upon a spirit essentially religious, shaped his whole 
 after career to this pattern of conduct and bearing. 
 It would have been easy for a nature, nourished as 
 88 
 
HIS RETICENCE 
 
 his had been in mountain solitudes to exaggerate 
 the importance of command. Yet Douglas was re- 
 markable throughout his whole career for nothing 
 more than for his sane self-knowledge. 
 
 An evidence that his self-assertiveness was on the 
 surface merely may be deduced from the fact that he 
 failed entirely to foresee the interest which the his- 
 torian would one day attach to his life and person- 
 ality. He did not apparently realize that, as a chief 
 factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the Pacific 
 coast for many years, and as the first governor of 
 the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Col- 
 umbia, he was moulding future events and must 
 one day stand as the central figure of his time. 
 Official statements he put forth in plenty ; but the 
 record of his life, as a whole, as throwing light up- 
 on the most interesting half century in western his- 
 tory, he invariably refused to compile, nor could 
 he ever be brought to see anything in the success 
 he had achieved which would add interest to his 
 personal opinions or actions. A natural repugnance 
 to publicity in part accounted for this. He was a 
 man of great reserve, though of strong passions 
 and deep feelings. But, above all, the unwritten 
 law of the company stood in the way; it is 
 easy to appreciate how such an obstacle appealed 
 to James Douglas. Unbroken silence on all mat- 
 ters of its internal economy, is the rule of the 
 company for its servants. Reminiscences, even of 
 the purely literary kind, were never encouraged; 
 
 89 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 and there are volumes of unwritten history in 
 the archives of the company to-day, which have 
 never become accessible to the student. 
 
 Of those invaluable aids to the historian, therefore, 
 — the memoir, the sheaf of letters, the diary, writ- 
 ten solely from the personal standpoint, — we have 
 few at hand, in the early years especially, for 
 use in writing the life of Sir James Douglas. 
 The loss is great. With the events of the period 
 during which he ruled on the coast, he was more 
 familiar than any other man. A history by Douglas 
 of the fur trade in the country west of the Rocky 
 Mountains, or of the early colonial period on the 
 Pacific, would have been a document the most 
 valuable of its kind. As a lover of biography, and a 
 careful student of politics, he fnight have been ex- 
 pected to employ the leisure of his later years in 
 literature and to have enriched it from his own unique 
 experience. He was possessed, besides, of a gift 
 of style, as his State papers show. That he passed 
 from the scene in silence is one of the most strik- 
 ing instances we have of a not uncommon phen- 
 omenon — the indifference of the men who bore the 
 brunt of the early battle with the wilderness, and 
 who solved the earliest problems of social organiza- 
 tion and government, to everything but the practi- 
 cal and immediately important side of the events 
 in which they played so large a part. 
 
 The greatest of men are creatures of circum- 
 stance ; but they are also springs of action ; and what 
 90 
 
BIRTH AT DEMERARA 
 
 we commonly term destiny is often only a conveni- 
 ent word for the complex relationship of man and 
 his environment. Political history, thus conceived, 
 becomes the biography of the makers of nations. 
 Every man is the product of his age ; but every age 
 is what its greatest men have made of it. It is in 
 this spirit that the present life of Douglas, shorn 
 largely from necessity of personal detail, has been 
 written. He, more than any other man, gave form 
 to British Columbia. As the legend in the great 
 London cathedral bids the reader look around if he 
 would see the monument of him whose mind con- 
 ceived the majestic pile ; so, if one would seek a 
 measure of the achievement of Sir James Douglas, 
 let him behold the fair province of the mountains 
 and the Pacific, whose sturdy growth bore in its 
 early fashioning the lasting impress of his handiwork. 
 The life of Douglas, therefore, serves as no other 
 would for text from which to hang a connected 
 narrative of the origin and progress of British Col- 
 umbia, youngest perhaps of all the provinces in that 
 her present but feebly foreshadows her great future, 
 yet bringing our history into vital touch with the 
 far-off time of the greatness of Spain, beginning even 
 with that fateful day on which Balboa first 
 
 “ Stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
 Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 
 
 Silent upon a peak in Darien.” 
 
 James Douglas was born at Demerara, British 
 Guiana, August 15th, 1803. His father was a de- 
 
 91 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 scendant of the Earl of Angus, the “Black Doug- 
 las” of Scottish history. Little is known of the 
 father’s youth or parentage, except that he was 
 the son of one John Douglas, merchant, of Glas- 
 gow. A search of the Registry Office at Edinburgh 
 reveals nothing of his earlier ancestry, John Doug- 
 las being a familiar name and frequently appearing 
 in the Glasgow records. 
 
 Lieutenant-General Sir Neil Douglas, K.C.B., 
 colonel of the 78th Regiment, who took part in the 
 battles of Busaco, the Pyrenees, Seville and Tou- 
 louse, and whose gallantry on the field of Waterloo 
 obtained for him the Austrian order of Maria- 
 Theresa and the Russian order of St. Vladimir, was 
 a cousin of James Douglas and has been described 
 as the “fifth son of the late John Douglas, Esq., of 
 Glasgow, whose grandfather, Douglas of Cruxton 
 and Stobbs, descended lineally from the famous 
 Earls of Angus.” The lineage of Douglas was well 
 known to his companions of the fur company, and 
 he went for many years by the sobriquet of the 
 “Black Douglas,” a title for which his swarthy 
 skin and stern cast of features was in part respon- 
 sible. 
 
 James was taken at an early age to Scotland, 
 where he was educated in a private school at 
 Lanark. He was a studious youth, conscientious 
 and of regular habits, traits which characterized 
 him through life. We are indebted to family tradi- 
 tion for the statement that his French tutor was 
 92 
 
ENTERS NORTH-WEST COMPANY 
 
 an exiled nobleman of France who was the means 
 of furnishing an accomplishment which Douglas 
 was soon after to turn to very practical account. In a 
 new country, engaged in a trade which brought 
 him into daily contact with the French-Canadian 
 voyageur , it was the most immediately useful part 
 of his education. Nearly all the Hudson Bay 
 traders spoke French fluently, and when Sir James 
 made a tour of the continent after his retirement 
 as governor, he was still able to converse in 
 French with a good accent. 
 
 It was in the year 1820 that Douglas left Scot- 
 land to seek his fortune in the service of the North- 
 West Company. The origin of his choice of a 
 career is in obscurity, but two brothers appear to 
 have preceded him in the same field. Although in 
 his seventeenth year only, he was already tall and 
 well developed, “with ideas beyond his age.” That 
 he had courage to leave kith and kin to plunge 
 into the wilderness of the New World goes without 
 saying. He reported at Fort William, the head- 
 quarters of the company, then under the rule of 
 the celebrated John McLoughlin, who seems to 
 have been struck immediately with the promise of 
 the lad. But the career thus launched was destined 
 to an early interruption. In 1821, the North-West 
 Company was absorbed by the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company (in what manner need not delay us 
 here), and Douglas was of the party which re- 
 garded the terms of union with dissatisfaction. He 
 
 93 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 was on the point of returning to Scotland with his 
 brothers, when McLoughlin persuaded him to 
 throw in his lot with the new regime. The friend- 
 ship of the older for the younger man, which was 
 to bear such rich fruits later, was already firmly 
 planted, in the soil of a warm and appreciative 
 nature on the one hand, and of sterling merit on 
 the other. McLoughlin was to have charge, under 
 the new arrangement, of the vast territory lying 
 west of the Rocky Mountains, then termed the 
 Columbia Department, and he wrote to the direc- 
 tory to ask that Douglas might accompany him. 
 The request was granted. In less than two years 
 service, and before he had reached his twentieth 
 year, Douglas had won the trust and friendship of 
 the man who ruled an empire equal in area to a 
 third of Europe and, though still in a state of 
 savage nature, rich beyond measure in political and 
 industrial possibilities. Great indeed was the oppor- 
 tunity; as will be seen, no part of it was thrown 
 away. 
 
 McLoughlin had had a history of his own which 
 is typical of the day and place. Born in 1784 at 
 Riviere du Loup, he had lost his father while still 
 a boy, and had grown up with his brother David 
 in the gray stone mansion of his grandfather, Mal- 
 colm Fraser, overlooking the St. Lawrence where 
 it widens to the sea. The children early caught a 
 military bearing from the grandsire who had brought 
 a Highland regiment to Canada and who had 
 94 
 
JOHN McLOUGHLIN 
 
 settled later on a St. Lawrence seigniory. It was a 
 discipline, too, of a thoroughly Scottish savour. 
 Scottish books were read ; Scottish tales were 
 told; the bagpipes droned in the hall; and the 
 kilts were often worn. When the boys grew 
 up, they were sent overseas, destined to the study 
 of medicine at Edinburgh. But Napoleon had 
 begun the war with England, and David fled his 
 gallipots to follow the Iron Duke to Waterloo. 
 John took another course. “I never could fight 
 Napoleon — I admire him too much,” he said, and 
 returned to Canada. Arrived there, he had still 
 his future before him. A story is told of the 
 incident which sent him into the service of the 
 North-West Company — a quarrel with an English 
 officer who had shown discourtesy to a lady on 
 the streets of Quebec. But his uncles were 
 high in the company, and the life might have 
 appealed to him on other grounds. Birth, talent, 
 and, above all, his splendid presence, brought rapid 
 promotion. His first important command was at 
 Sault Ste. Marie: it was in McLoughlin’s time 
 that the post was burned during the War of 1812 . 
 Here he had married the widow of his friend 
 McKay. (McKay had crossed the continent with 
 Alexander Mackenzie and had been one of those 
 engaged by Astor in Montreal for his venture on 
 the Pacific — a voyage from which McKay never re- 
 turned, having been slain by the Indians on the ill- 
 fated Tonquin.) Thence he passed to Fort William, 
 
 95 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the metropolitan post of the company, then in its 
 time of greatest splendour, — his hair white before 
 he was thirty from an accident in Lake Superior, in 
 which all but himself were lost. Of the remainder 
 of his life there will be more in the sequel. 
 
 It was a part of McLoughlin’s plans for Doug- 
 las, when, on the amalgamation of the companies, 
 the faces of the two were turned westward, that he 
 should not be confined too closely to any one 
 branch, but that by a succession of duties he might 
 become conversant with the entire range of the 
 service. Consistent with his duty to the company, 
 McLoughlin seems to have spared no favour that 
 inured to the advancement of his protege. Douglas 
 was already an excellent accountant; he had more- 
 over a thorough command of the language of the 
 voyageur. The time was come, therefore, when he 
 must learn at first hand the ponderous yet minute 
 organization by which the operations of the united 
 companies were conducted in the field. New Cale- 
 donia, the nucleus from which the present province 
 of British Columbia was to evolve, was at the 
 moment the most distant and difficult of Mc- 
 Loughlin’s outlying departments. To New Cale- 
 donia, accordingly, went Douglas, after an inter- 
 val spent with McLoughlin himself in the Atha- 
 baska district, for the very sake of the difficul- 
 ties which offered there and the experience to be 
 gained in encountering them. This was in 1823 
 or 1824. 
 
 96 
 
NEW CALEDONIA 
 
 A glance at the natural conditions and the 
 state of development which awaited the young 
 trader in New Caledonia will be of interest here. 
 Dotted with innumerable lakes; thridded by a 
 network of rivers, with the Fraser for central 
 waterway; hemmed in and intersected throughout 
 by mountains, clad in the south with the Douglas fir 
 and in the north with spruce and pine; New Cale- 
 donia embraced, roughly, the whole of the territory 
 between the Rockies and the coast range of moun- 
 tains, from the valley of the Thompson on the 
 south to the northern sources of the Peace. The 
 interminable forest with which the district was 
 covered yielded no food save berries, roots, and the 
 flesh of animals ; but the lakes and rivers abounded 
 in fish and waterfowl. From time immemorial the 
 region had been peopled by the western Dene 
 Indians, the main branches of which were the 
 Nahanais and Sekanais in the extreme north and 
 east, the Babines and Carriers in the west and 
 centre, and the Chilcotins in the south and west. 
 They, as well as the white men who first entered 
 the country, depended almost wholly upon the 
 salmon for their food, so much so that the damming 
 of a stream by a fall of rock would cause an entire 
 tribe to remove. How Mackenzie discovered and 
 how Fraser took possession of the country, has 
 been already described. Rocky Mountain Portage, 
 the first post of Fraser, was built in 1805. McLeod, 
 the first permanent station ever erected in British 
 
 97 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Columbia west of the mountains, still standing with- 
 out a year of interruption, had been established soon 
 after. The discovery of Stuart Lake followed; and 
 Fort St. James, destined as the depot of the new 
 district, arose on its banks in one of the most beau- 
 tiful spots of that land of surpassing natural beauty. 
 Fort Fraser, on Fraser Lake, and Fort George, on the 
 Fraser River, were built in the same year. For three 
 years longer, which included the famous descent of 
 the great central river, the pioneers of the company 
 laboured on the foundations of the new district. In 
 1809, Fraser returned east, to assume command in 
 1811 of the Red River Department. Too poor to ac- 
 cept the knighthood which was offered to him, he 
 died in 1862 at the great age of eighty-six. Stuart, 
 the right hand, according to some the brain, of Fra- 
 ser’s enterprise, succeeded him in New Caledonia, 
 with Harmon as first lieutenant. Stuart was still in 
 command on the amalgamation of the companies 
 in 1821, and to a large extent directed the expan- 
 sion and multiplication of posts which immediately 
 followed. Kamloops, the centre of the Thompson 
 River district, had been built in 1813, the year in 
 which communications were first established be- 
 tween the Columbia and the Fraser; and in 1821 
 the building of Fort Alexandria, on the Fraser, still 
 further facilitated the bringing in of supplies by the 
 new route from the south instead of by the old and 
 laborious passage from the east. Babine, famous for 
 its salmon, on the northern lake of the same name, 
 98 
 
EARLY TRADING POSTS 
 
 was built in the following year, and Chilcotin, an 
 outpost of Alexandria, situated among a tribe not- 
 able for its ferocity, about the same time. In 1824, 
 however, the year from which the connection of 
 Douglas with New Caledonia is dated, Stuart with- 
 drew to the Mackenzie, and in his stead William 
 Conolly, an Irishman of long experience in the 
 trade, was appointed chief factor. Douglas who had 
 been placed under the command of the new officer 
 while McLoughlin went forward to the Columbia, 
 was of the party which accompanied Conolly across 
 the mountains when the latter first took office. 
 With them were the wife and half-breed family of 
 the chief factor, a convoy of twenty-four men, and 
 the usual quota of supplies for the district. 
 
 At the time of Douglas’s arrival, three clerks 
 whose names are of frequent appearance in the later 
 history of British Columbia, made up the staff of 
 the chief factor at Stuart Lake — McDougall, Pam- 
 brun and Yale. At Fraser Lake, McDonnell was in 
 charge, with an assistant clerk. At McLeod Lake, 
 Alexandria, and Babine, the other important posts 
 of the district, Tod, McDougall, and Brown were 
 in command. The district was already very prosper- 
 ous. Beside furs, such commodities as birch bark, 
 pitch, sturgeon oil, pemmican, Indian rice, buffalo 
 robes, snowshoes, parchment for windows, dressed 
 buffalo and moose skins and buffalo tongues entered 
 into the trade of the country, and returned good 
 profits to the company. There were more than the 
 
 99 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 usual dangers and hardships in the service of that 
 isolated district, and the fragments of old journals 
 that have survived are replete with tales of suffer- 
 ing. The question of supplies pressed unceasingly ; 
 and the treachery of the natives constituted a cease- 
 less menace. Sickness and desertions among the men 
 were on a corresponding scale. 
 
 i 
 
 The record of Douglas’s stay in New Caledonia is 
 involved in much confusion and obscurity, some of 
 which, at this date, is inexplicable. The leading in- 
 cidents, however, stand out in greater or less relief; 
 and it is possible to construct from them a narrative 
 that is intelligible, if not at every point consecutive. 
 
 He remained at first with Conolly at Fort St. 
 James, to the temporary command of which he suc- 
 ceeded from time to time during the absences of his 
 chief. Later he served as clerk at McLeod Lake to 
 John Tod, famed as a controversialist and writer of 
 letters, and, as he gave satisfaction, we find in due 
 course the annual council of the company recom- 
 mending that he “be engaged for a term of three 
 years from the expiration of his contract, at £60 a 
 year.” But he soon returned to the more important 
 duties of Stuart Lake. Of his activities here some 
 interesting details are given in the MS. journal of 
 the fort, which, as they shed light upon the gener- 
 al nature of the life in New Caledonia, may be 
 quoted here. As was said above, the maintenance of 
 a constant supply of provisions was the first care of 
 100 
 
THE SALMON FISHERY 
 
 the early trading-posts. In this connection a fishery 
 had been established at the mouth of a small stream 
 on Stuart Lake, where, in 1806, the company had 
 met the first Indians of the country. The catch, 
 however, had been uncertain, and it was finally re- 
 solved to establish a second station on the head- 
 waters of another river falling into the same 
 reservoir. Douglas was placed in charge of the new 
 fishery, and the journal 1 contains the following re- 
 ferences to his operations : 
 
 Saturday , November 10th , 1827 , — “ Received 
 from the [old] fishery fifty-nine whitefish, the pro- 
 duce of two nights. Clermont brought over the 
 
 greater part of the nets To-morrow Mr. 
 
 Douglas, with two fishermen, Bichon and Clermont, 
 and two men to assist them will proceed to Yukogh 
 (or Petit Lac) to establish the fishery there. This 
 gentleman will not only superintend the fishery, 
 but will also collect the fish which the Indians may 
 have to dispose of immediately, for which purpose 
 he is provided with leather [dressed skins] and other 
 articles of trade.” 
 
 Sunday , 11th , — “ Mr. Douglas, with five men, set 
 out for the fishery of Yukogh. They are well pro- 
 vided with nets, having eight of small thread, three 
 
 of willow, and four of Holland twine Most 
 
 of the dogs are also sent to the fishery.” 
 
 Wednesday , lAth , — “ Vadeboncoeur came from 
 
 1 Quoted by Morice, History of the Northern Interior of British 
 Columbia, pp. 127-9. 
 
 101 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the fishery and informed me that these two days 
 back they had not taken a sufficiency for their 
 consumption. I ordered them to come across to- 
 morrow to prepare to go and join Mr. Douglas at 
 the other fishery.” 
 
 From that date on we have frequent glimpses of 
 the future governor hauling with dog sledges the 
 fish he had taken at his station or had purchased 
 from the Indians. The life was one of incessant toil 
 and hardship even for the officers. To the end of his 
 stay in New Caledonia, which was prolonged for 
 six years, Douglas was busy with fish and furs, as 
 the following entry in the journal made on the eve 
 of his departure for Fort Vancouver shows : 
 
 January 1st , 1830, — “ .... Mr. Douglas also re- 
 turned from his trip. In the way of furs he was 
 more successful than had been expected, having 
 collected, principally among the Kuzche Indians, 
 about one hundred and ten pounds’ weight of ex- 
 cellent furs, chiefly beaver and martin. But the fish 
 trade has entirely disappointed us, only about one 
 thousand and six hundred having been procured, 
 part of which the dogs have brought to the fort by 
 Mr. Douglas’s men.” 
 
 For the rest, the story of Douglas’s life in New 
 Caledonia is involved in many discrepancies. In the 
 main, it groups itself about two or three well de- 
 fined incidents, which may be dealt with as nearly 
 as possible in chronological order. 
 
 102 
 
MARRIAGE 
 
 It was probably soon after his arrival at Stuart 
 Lake that the young officer took to wife Amelia 
 Conolly, the daughter of the chief factor of New 
 Caledonia. She was then in her sixteenth year, 
 described as a shy, sweet and lovable girl, “ mod- 
 est as the wood violet,” and having in addi- 
 tion to personal beauty, the blood of native 
 heroes in her veins. A younger sister Julia, who 
 also married an officer of the company, shared 
 in the family attractiveness, as her portrait by an 
 artist who accompanied the first expedition of 
 Sir John Franklin shows. Beautiful and accom- 
 plished, the sisters were admired of all. The 
 stay of the young wife in New Caledonia after her 
 marriage was of short duration. Following her 
 husband to Fort Vancouver, there happened one of 
 those perilous chances to which women as well as 
 men in that stern period were exposed, her boat 
 upsetting in the dangerous passage of the Fraser. 
 
 A description of the domestic life of the family 
 in the later years of Fort Vancouver shows her 
 ripened into a comely matron, her children about 
 her knees, while Douglas on a Sabbath evening 
 read to them from his Bible on the flower-decked 
 porch of the officers’ quarters. The eldest daugh- 
 ter of the family in after years married Dallas, 
 who subsequently became governor of the com- 
 pany at Winnipeg. It may be added in passing 
 that the status of Indian marriages had a personal 
 bearing for Douglas from the fact that Conolly, his 
 
 103 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 father-in-law, on his retirement separated from his 
 Indian wife and married again. Important legal 
 proceedings followed, with the result that the first 
 marriages in such cases were declared binding and 
 the children legitimate. 
 
 There has been some debate as to the exact share 
 borne by Douglas in the extension of the com- 
 pany’s operations in New Caledonia during the 
 period of his service there. That he was prominent 
 in the work is the evidence of several. Interest has 
 centred in this connection in the erection of Fort 
 Conolly, so named from the chief factor, and 
 designed to facilitate from its situation on Bear 
 Lake the trade with the Sekanais Indians. Douglas 
 has been considered by many as the guiding spirit 
 in that enterprise. On other evidence, however, he 
 was operating in a region remote from Bear Lake 
 in the year in which Fort Conolly was founded. 
 The fact is not of first importance, knowing as we 
 do the general activity of Douglas in exploration, 
 and having the assurance from indubitable sources 
 that for six years crowded with incident he lived 
 the full life of the district. His mastery of the 
 Indian languages is but one evidence of the energy 
 with which he threw himself into the work ; and on 
 his retirement from New Caledonia he had already 
 laid the foundations of a knowledge of the Pacific 
 slope that was later to be unrivalled. One of the 
 many vicissitudes that befell him at this period, 
 easily the most fateful in his early life, may be re- 
 104 
 
INDIAN OUTRAGE 
 
 ferred to in some detail, not for its intrinsic import- 
 ance, but as illustrating the character of the man, 
 the life of the place and the precarious nature of the 
 evidence on which it is necessary to rely in this por- 
 tion of the narrative. 
 
 In 1823, Yale, who was in command of Fort 
 George, had occasion to pay a visit to Stuart Lake. 
 On his return the mangled bodies of his two assist- 
 ants were found in an outhouse, at their side one of 
 the company’s axes with which they had been done 
 to death by two Fraser Lake Indians. The motive 
 of the deed is unrecorded. Yale was temporarily 
 suspended on the ground of negligence, but on full 
 investigation was reinstated. One of the murderers 
 soon after paid the penalty of his crime. Several years 
 elapsed, when in the summer of 1828, the survivor, 
 Tzoelhnolle by name, hazarded a visit to Stuart 
 Lake. Concerning the sequel we may note the 
 versions of the more important writers who have 
 considered the matter worthy of minute descrip- 
 tion. 
 
 Bancroft , 1 whose informant was John Tod of 
 Fort McLeod, — an excellent authority, though over 
 eighty miles distant at the time of the occurrence, — 
 states that the occasion of the Indian’s visit to Fort 
 St. James was a native celebration, at a time when 
 Douglas was in charge. The latter having been in- 
 formed of the fact, immediately went in search of 
 the murderer who took refuge under a pile of camp 
 
 1 History of the North- West Coast , Chapter XX. 
 
 105 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 equipage. Though an arrow-point stared him in the 
 face, Douglas and young Conolly seized the wretch 
 and killed him, in requital of which the former was 
 taken prisoner soon after by two hundred savages 
 with blackened faces and compelled to pay com- 
 pensation. 
 
 McLean 1 relates the incident somewhat as fol- 
 lows: The Indian having visited Fort St. James when 
 Douglas was in command, and the latter, though 
 with a weak garrison, having executed “wild justice” 
 on the murderer, the tribe, thoroughly incensed, de- 
 termined to obtain reprisal through a stratagem. 
 The old chief came alone to the fort and was ad- 
 mitted; the matter was discussed at length, and 
 seemed in a fair way of being settled when a 
 knock was heard at the gate. “It is my brother,” 
 said the chief, “come to hear what you have to 
 say.” The gate was opened, when the whole of the 
 Nekasey tribe rushed in. The men of the fort 
 were overpowered ; and though Douglas seized a 
 wall piece, he was speedily borne down. His life 
 was in the utmost peril as he was held by the chief 
 while thirty or forty Indians surrounded him 
 brandishing knives and shouting “Shall we strike?” 
 The chief hesitated, and the life of Douglas was 
 saved only by the prompt courage of the wife of 
 the interpreter of the fort who harangued the 
 Indians and secured his release. 
 
 1 Notes of Twenty-five Years Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory , — 
 Vol. I. page 2G8. 
 
 106 
 
AN EPISODE AT STUART LAKE 
 
 Father Morice , 1 who, in knowledge of the north- 
 ern interior of British Columbia is without a peer, 
 gives an entirely different account from the fore- 
 going, quoting from native eye-witnesses. One 
 of the murderers, according to Morice, had al- 
 ready paid the penalty of his crime, having been 
 secretly slain by the company’s servants who 
 burned the remains in such a way as to suggest an 
 accident, when the survivor visited Stuart Lake, 
 Douglas being in charge. Hearing of his arrival, 
 Douglas went in search, and Tzoelhnolle, though 
 he hid under some skins, was quickly discovered. 
 After an angry altercation, Douglas seized the 
 murderer by the hair and fired at him with his 
 blunderbuss, but the bullet flew wide; whereupon 
 his men beat the life out of the Indian with hoes 
 and clubs. The body was dragged out and left in 
 the open ; Morice adds that it was left to the 
 dogs. Several days afterwards, the chief with 
 the father of Tzoelhnolle arrived; Douglas was 
 seized within the precincts of the fort ; and the 
 chiefs nephew pointing a dagger at his breast 
 impatiently asked, “Shall I strike?” A brave at- 
 tempt at rescue by the young wife of Douglas was 
 overpowered. Thereupon the women of the fort 
 threw tobacco, clothing and other goods into the 
 crowd, securing the release of Douglas. 
 
 These are only three of a great number of des- 
 criptions of an affair which has been given an alto- 
 
 1 History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia } page 138. 
 
 107 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 gether disproportionate importance . 1 With reference 
 to the last account, which is that of an unbending 
 critic of the Hudson’s Bay Company, some doubt 
 may be permitted, notwithstanding the unrivalled 
 knowledge of the author’s, to a statement based 
 on the traditions of local tribes and involving the 
 ability of the native to recall at a date removed 
 by half a century the circumstances of an incident 
 concerning which he would have many tempta- 
 tions to fashion a version to his own credit. In 
 any event, it would seem precipitate to base 
 on this and other incidents in the early career of 
 Douglas, the hypothesis that his removal to Fort 
 Vancouver — the next great step in his career — 
 came as a result of his inability to work in har- 
 mony with the Indians. Every reasonable estimate 
 we have of the character of Douglas and of his 
 value as an official is opposed to such a view. The 
 change, as there is cause to believe, was in the way 
 of preferment for success well earned in a diffi- 
 cult branch of the service, and for abilities already 
 proved and now required in a larger field. It was 
 carried out under the immediate direction of the 
 governor, who, if any man, would be aware of the 
 facts of the case, and would scarcely recommend for 
 honour one who had jeopardized the company’s in- 
 terests in their most vital particular. W e need hold 
 no brief for either Douglas or the company in the 
 
 x For variations of the story see Gray, History of Oregon , p. 44 ; 
 Hines, Oregon History , p. 392, etc., cited by Bancroft. 
 
 108 
 
SIMPSON AT FORT ST. JAMES 
 
 method in which justice was meted to the wretched 
 native of the story ; but that the result was of far- 
 reaching import to the career of the leading actor 
 or to the relations of the company with the Indians, 
 is perhaps beyond the ability of the historian at this 
 date to demonstrate. 
 
 Before the transfer of Douglas to Fort Van- 
 couver, he had the opportunity of receiving in New 
 Caledonia no less a personage than the governor of 
 the company, Sir George Simpson, then on his tour 
 of inspection of the posts in 1828. A somewhat 
 detailed account of the ceremonies of the occasion 
 has survived. To impress the savage mind, it was 
 thought advisable that the governor should make 
 his entry into Fort St. James with even more than 
 the usual amount of display. Within a mile of the 
 lake the party halted, breakfasted, and decorated. 
 The order of march was then arranged. The British 
 ensign, fluttering to the breeze, was borne by a 
 guide at the head of the procession. A band of 
 buglers and bagpipers followed. Behind rode the 
 governor, supported by the doctor of the party 
 and a neighbouring chief factor, also mounted. 
 Twenty men packing burdens next formed the line, 
 while another officer with his wife and family 
 brought up the rear. Arriving in view of the fort 
 itself, the bugles sounded and the bagpipes struck up 
 a famous march of the clans. Douglas replied with 
 canon and musketry, advancing to receive his dis- 
 
 109 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 tinguished visitor. The first exchange of civilities 
 ended, the line reformed, pipers and buglers entered 
 the enclosure, and, marching along the gallery con- 
 tiguous to the palisade, paraded in view of the 
 wondering natives. A dozen years later when the 
 governor was on his famous voyage around the 
 world, Douglas had a second time the honour of 
 welcoming him to a post of the company. The 
 scene was at Fort Vancouver, and Douglas had by 
 this time risen to all but the first rank in the most 
 important station of the company west of the 
 Rocky Mountains. 
 
 The change to Fort Vancouver came in 1830. It 
 marks the beginning of the career of Douglas as an 
 officer of real importance to the company. Mc- 
 Loughlin’s suggestion doubtless lay at the root of 
 the transfer. A good accountant, possessed of ad- 
 ministrative ability and capable of lightening the 
 responsibility of the chief factor in minor affairs, 
 was called for. Simpson himself had noted the 
 capacity of Douglas during his visit to New Cale- 
 donia. The important nature of the post made the 
 question of its officers a vital one. Ninety miles in- 
 land from the sea, on a green terrace sloping from 
 the northern bank of the Columbia, Fort Van- 
 couver, like a mediaeval castle, was at once a 
 refuge in time of danger, an oasis of civilization in 
 a surrounding desert of barbarism, and a capital 
 from which its commander ruled the adjacent 
 110 
 
McLOUGHLIN AT FORT VANCOUVER 
 
 territory. The fur country immediately tributary 
 was wide and rich ; and the Indian tribes to 
 develop its resources were numerous. But it was 
 more than this. Built by McLoughlin in 1824-5 on 
 the abandonment of Astoria, Fort Vancouver had 
 the threefold advantage of a central location, a sur- 
 rounding country adapted to agriculture, and acces- 
 sibility to sea-going ships. The fort, accordingly, 
 for nearly a quarter of a century, was the emporium 
 not only of the company’s vast interior trade, but 
 of the traffic by sea both coastwise and with 
 England and the Orient. It formed the counterpart 
 of York on Hudson Bay, with an even wider 
 range of operations and involving even greater 
 responsibilities, on account of its distance from 
 Great Britain. McLoughlin for this reason was in- 
 vested with more than the usual powers of chief 
 factor, having to act to a great extent on his own 
 initiative. In many ways he was as supreme even 
 as the governor at Fort Garry. For twenty years 
 his rule was that of a Czar over the territory that 
 stretched from Alaska to California, and from the 
 Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Uncounted 
 thousands of Indians — Cayuses, Walla Wallas, 
 Okanagans, Nez Perces, Flatheads, Spokanes, 
 Klickitats, Wascopams, Molallas, Callapooias, 
 Tillamooks, Chinooks, Clatsops, — obeyed his be- 
 hests and feared his displeasure. Over every water- 
 way in that immense region he sent his Canadian 
 voyageurs ; through hundreds of miles of forest he 
 
 111 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 dispatched his trappers and traders ; in and out of 
 the fringing north-west islands, to Sitka itself, his 
 schooners plied ; throughout the San Joaquin and 
 Tulare valleys, over the Shoshone country, on the 
 shores of Salt Lake and in the Yellowstone itself, 
 his brigades pitched their tents ; all alike bringing 
 home rich tribute to the company, and restlessly 
 seeking further and ever further regions to subdue. 
 
 To share in this command, the first coadjutor of 
 McLoughlin, Douglas, young as he was, had been 
 chosen. It was an office great in its present powers 
 and responsibilities ; in the hands of Douglas, its 
 future was to lead him to still higher place and 
 honour. 
 
 112 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FORT VANCOUVER 
 
 T HE moment of Douglas’s arrival at Fort Van- 
 couver was an important one in the history 
 of the company. Up to 1830 little had been ac- 
 complished west of the Rocky Mountains beyond 
 the slow and laborious establishment of a single 
 pathway to the sea and the subjection of the 
 country immediately tributary. New Caledonia had 
 been given, for the time, its full measure of de- 
 velopment; but the situation of McLoughlin at 
 Fort Vancouver was still, to outward seeming, not 
 unlike that of Fraser twenty years previously. The 
 new fort had, however, what Fraser’s posts had 
 not, the illimitable promise which the command of 
 both sea and land and the adaptability of the latter 
 for agriculture held out. With the building of Fort 
 Vancouver in 1824 and the occupation of the Col- 
 umbia, the way was cleared for a policy of expan- 
 sion on a scale unprecedented in the previous 
 annals of the company. For this, after six years of 
 preliminary effort, the time was now considered 
 ripe ; and Douglas was a part of the material which 
 was placed in the hands of McLoughlin. It was the 
 fortune, therefore, of Douglas to be identified from 
 the first with the movement which brought the 
 whole of the coast and the lower mainland of 
 
 113 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 British Columbia under the subjection of the white 
 man. 
 
 The full measure of the company’s design at 
 that period may be guessed from the part that was 
 actually realized. McLoughlin was the directing 
 spirit, though Douglas from the first entered fully 
 into the confidence of his chief and assisted in the 
 formation as well as the execution of his plans. That 
 the company had in view a great trade north and 
 south along the coast, with Russians and Mexicans 
 as well as the native tribes ; that it set no bounds 
 to the regions it sought to dominate in the interior; 
 that the Sandwich Islands were included in its com- 
 mercial suzerainty ; this much we know from history. 
 That it cast its vision still further, to the Orient 
 and the southern seas, is not improbable. Magnifi- 
 cent as was the dream of an ocean added to a 
 continent for its sole trade, it was no more 
 than the occasion seemed to warrant. Ocean and 
 continent alike were a no-man’s domain; not a 
 rival in 1825-30 was in sight. But events moved 
 too rapidly to leave so tremendous a development 
 to private enterprise. The advent of the American 
 colonist in Oregon, the establishment of the United 
 States in California, and the definite partitionment 
 of the north-west coast between Great Britain and 
 the republic in the celebrated treaty of 1846, were 
 destined to dissipate these hopes almost as soon 
 as they were formed. The missionaries were in 
 Oregon within a decade of McLoughlin him- 
 114 
 
EXPANSION IN THE FUR TRADE 
 
 self ; and they were followed by a population that 
 was to drive the fur trader forever from the land. 
 
 For the forty years, however, that followed the ad- 
 vent of the white man west of the Rocky Mountains, 
 the history of that territory is the history of the 
 fur trade. Its earlier stages have been already out- 
 lined. In the present and in the following chapter 
 will be noted the more important developments 
 that ensued, with Fort Vancouver for centre, 
 during the second quarter of the century, or un- 
 til the division of Oregon between Great Britain 
 and the United States, and the removal of 
 the company’s headquarters north of the 49th 
 parallel. In discussing the period, it will be neces- 
 sary first to trace the natural process of expansion, 
 northward in the direction of Russian territory, 
 southward towards California, as well as in the 
 interior of New Caledonia and Oregon. Later, the 
 movement contingent upon the settlement of 
 Oregon and the determination of the international 
 boundary, with the political consequences involved 
 therein, will be briefly outlined. 
 
 The first step looking to the extension of the 
 company’s influence northward was taken almost 
 immediately after the establishment of Fort Van- 
 couver. In 1824, an expedition sent out by Mc- 
 Loughlin made a careful examination of the shore- 
 ward territory lying between the Columbia and 
 the Fraser; and its members were the first to 
 
 115 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 enter the latter river from the sea. Before further 
 action was taken, however, the strengthening of 
 communications with New Caledonia, which, as 
 above noted, had already been established through 
 Kamloops and Alexandria, required attention. This 
 was accomplished by the founding of F ort Colville, 
 in 1825-6, on the Upper Columbia, a post which at 
 once attained importance as a depot for the sur- 
 rounding territory and as final place of call for the 
 brigades which, from this time forward, began to 
 pass regularly eastward from the coast to Edmon- 
 ton and Norway House. 
 
 After this interlude, McLoughlin turned again 
 to the north, and Fort Langley was erected on the 
 Lower Fraser in 1827. Langley therefore repre- 
 sents the earliest occupation of the lower mainland 
 of British Columbia. The schooner Cadboro which 
 carried the crew and supplies for the new post was 
 the first sea-going keel to ruffle the Fraser and the 
 many bays of the neighbouring coast. Langley at 
 once became important, the more so on account of 
 its excellent salmon fishery. For a time, also, the 
 trade of the coast northward was conducted through 
 the Indians alone, with Langley as entrepot. 
 
 But competition pressed, that especially of the 
 American traders; and in 1831 a bold resolve was 
 taken. Fort Simpson was tremblingly erected at 
 the mouth of the Naas, some hundreds of miles 
 north of Langley. It arose in the midst of the most 
 treacherous savages known on the coast; and its 
 116 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE COAST 
 
 occupation became in a peculiar degree a test of 
 military endurance. It was the outpost for many 
 years of the company’s effort to monopolize the 
 north-west trade. 
 
 To occupy the territory between Fort Langley 
 and Fort Simpson now became the concern of 
 McLoughlin. In 1833, Finlayson, Manson and 
 Anderson were sent north in the brig Dryad , John 
 Dunn, known as the author of a history of Oregon, 
 serving as their interpreter. At Millbank Sound, 
 they were joined by McNeill in the Llama. (As 
 throwing light upon conditions at this juncture, it 
 may be explained that McNeill’s first appearance 
 on the coast had been as the agent of a Boston 
 company with a shipload of gewgaws for the In- 
 dian trade. These completely outbid the company’s 
 staple commodities, with the result that McLough- 
 lin, to rid himself of the nuisance, had bought the 
 ship and her cargo outright and enlisted its captain 
 in the company’s service.) In the all but impene- 
 trable forest that stretched to the water’s edge, a 
 space was cleared and a fort erected, closed in by 
 the usual picket, one hundred and twenty yards 
 square in this instance, with a height of eighteen 
 feet. Such was Fort McLoughlin. From the first it 
 was a scene of conflict with the Indians. Manson 
 and Anderson were left in command, Tolmie suc- 
 ceeding Anderson in 1834 and Manson being re- 
 placed by Charles Ross in 1838. The first circulat- 
 ing library on the Pacific slope was founded by 
 
 117 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Tolmie and Manson for the benefit of these posts. 
 In the same year as Fort McLoughlin, Fort Nis- 
 qually was erected between Langley and Fort Van- 
 couver, and in 1835 Fort Essington was built to 
 serve as intermediate station between Forts Simp- 
 son and McLoughlin. 
 
 With the completion of these operations, the way 
 was prepared for the inevitable collision with Russia 
 that soon followed. As early as 1825 the need of a 
 partitionment of interests between Great Britain and 
 Russia on the north-west coast had been fully appre- 
 ciated, and had resulted in the signing of a conven- 
 tion which was destined to affect far distant and 
 strangely altered times and which therefore is among 
 the most important episodes in the period at present 
 in review. Under its terms, the subjects of both 
 governments were free to navigate the Pacific and 
 to trade with the natives of any shore not already 
 occupied by Europeans. The traders might land at 
 the posts of their rivals for shelter or repairs, but 
 for no other reason, unless by express permission. 
 Prince of Wales Island was established as the 
 southern limit of Russian territory, the island to 
 belong wholly to Russia. On the mainland, the 
 boundary, after following the channel of the Port- 
 land Canal to the 56th parallel, was to lie along the 
 summits of the coast range of mountains which it 
 should follow parallel to the shore as far as longitude 
 141°. Thence it should run due north to the 
 Arctic Ocean. Where the summits of the mountains, 
 118 
 
THE ALASKA BOUNDARY 
 
 however, from the 56th parallel northward should 
 be more than ten marine leagues from the 
 ocean, the dividing line, it was agreed, should curve 
 with the curving of the shore at that distance. For 
 ten years the British were granted the right to trade 
 throughout the lisiere and to the port of Sitka 
 in all save arms, ammunition, and spirits. To the 
 streams running through the shore-strip to the 
 ocean, the right was granted in perpetuity. Such 
 was the beginning of the Alaska boundary question, 
 a matter that was not finally laid to rest until 1903. 
 The terms were dictated purely by the circum- 
 stances of the rival trading companies, the only 
 value of the coast-strip to the Russians being that 
 it excluded the British from the trade of the inter- 
 ior. Intercourse was held at that time by the Rus- 
 sians only with the Indians of the coast, the latter 
 bartering with the inland tribes at the head of the 
 mountains. Furs and furs alone were the cause of 
 contention in 1825 ; the land, which in 1903 was 
 the point at issue, was at that time regarded as 
 worthless. 
 
 The navigable rivers, it will have been noted, were 
 left as an avenue by which the British traders might 
 pierce the Russian cordon to the interior. In 1834, 
 the first attempt to utilize this concession was made. 
 The most considerable river crossing the strip of land 
 below the 141st degree was the Stikine. To enter it, 
 traverse the Russian zone, and establish a post in the 
 hinterland, was the object of an expedition sent north 
 
 119 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 under Ogden and Anderson in the year mentioned. 
 The party was well equipped, as befitted one whose 
 mission was the founding of a station able to sup- 
 port itself a thousand miles from any base of supplies, 
 and to fight both savages and rivals. But it had appar- 
 ently reckoned without its host. At the mouth of 
 the Stikine a Russian blockhouse was encountered, 
 supported by a corvette and two gunboats to forbid 
 the entrance to the river. The Russians well appre- 
 ciated the danger to their trade that lurked in the de- 
 signs of the British ; and the alleged sale of firearms 
 and spirits to the natives was now used by Baron 
 Wrangel, the Russian governor at Sitka, as the 
 grounds for a request to the imperial government to 
 rescind the clause of the treaty which gave the British 
 access to the river. Without awaiting a reply, 
 W rangel had fortified the Stikine as soon as news of 
 the projected move of the Hudson’s Bay Company 
 reached Sitka. The coast Indians, jealous of their 
 commerce with the interior tribes, added their refusal 
 to that of the Russian governor. Heated negotiations 
 were conducted on the spot between the rivals ; but 
 after a delay of a few days the company’s ship was put 
 about and returned to Fort Vancouver, armed with 
 a lengthy protest and bill of losses for reference to 
 the home government. On the way back, that the 
 expedition might not be wholly fruitless, F ort Simp- 
 son was removed some forty miles to the south. 
 
 The negotiations that followed between Russia 
 and Great Britain took shape finally in a corn- 
 120 
 
DOUGLAS AT FORT VANCOUVER 
 
 mission which met in London. As a result, the 
 shore-strip reservation was leased to the Hudson’s 
 Bay Company by Russia at an annual rental of two 
 thousand land-otter skins. The Stikine post was 
 handed over ; and permission was given to erect 
 another post still further northward on the Taku. It 
 was agreed also that the British should supply the 
 Russians at Sitka with provisions, which the in- 
 clemency of northern latitudes prevented the Rus- 
 sians from raising for themselves. So satisfactory in 
 the issue did this arrangement prove that it was 
 three times renewed, while in addition to Fort 
 Taku on the coast, two posts, Mumford and Glen- 
 ora, were erected on the Upper Stikien, where they 
 remained until the advent of the gold-seeker drove 
 the game from the district. 
 
 Douglas played a prominent part in directing the 
 events which ended as above described. Soon after 
 his arrival on the coast he had revised and greatly 
 improved the system of accounting by which the 
 several posts of the department made annual re- 
 turns to Fort Vancouver. At least once he had been 
 in charge of the York Factory express, a difficult 
 and dangerous service, the route lying by way of 
 Walla Walla, Colville, and the Athabaska Pass, to 
 Edmonton, thence to Hudson Bay and return. 
 This was in 1835, the party consisting of twenty- 
 nine Canadians in three boats, eight months being 
 consumed in the journey. It was Douglas, also, 
 who, in 1840, was in command of the party which 
 
 121 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 raised the British flag above Fort Stikine. The 
 mission was of considerable importance. Rae, Fin- 
 lay son and the son of McLoughlin, with fifty men, 
 made up the force. By way of Nisqually and 
 Langley, the latter being found in ruins from an 
 Indian attack, and passing forts McLoughlin and 
 Simpson, they steamed in the Beaver to the head- 
 quarters of the company in the leased territory, 
 where the formal act of transfer was completed. A 
 brave rescue by Douglas of a member of his crew 
 who had been swept away while fording the icy 
 waters of the Nisqually River was recorded on this 
 journey. Rae, with eighteen men, was left at 
 Stikine, and Douglas with the rest passed on to 
 Sitka. Ten days were spent with Etholin in the 
 final ratification of the agreement. Some words were 
 dropped as to the purchase of Ross in California, but 
 nothing definite resulted. On the return from Sitka, 
 Fort Durham, commonly known as Taku, was 
 erected. In that desolate spot of almost constant 
 rain and snow, and among some of the wildest 
 natives of the coast, it had a life of only three years. 
 Douglas was again in charge of the party which 
 dismantled the post. Fort McLoughlin on Mill- 
 bank Sound was at the same time moved to 
 the head of Vancouver Island and renamed Fort 
 Rupert. Indian turbulence, here as in no other part 
 of the company’s dominions, constantly menaced 
 its affairs. McLoughlin the younger, who had fol- 
 lowed Rae at Fort Stikine, was shot in 1842, per- 
 122 
 
ROBERT CAMPBELL 
 
 haps the most signal victim of the animosity in the 
 teeth of which the company drove its northern trade. 
 
 With the movement upon Russian trade by way 
 of the sea, it had been decided to attack from the 
 land as well; and the result was a series of expedi- 
 tions in the northern interior of British Columbia 
 that recall the days of Mackenzie and Fraser. 
 With a courage not less conspicuous, the company 
 pushed its way into the region of the Upper Liard 
 and Yukon which the white man had never before 
 seen. The incident belongs in part to the develop- 
 ment of the Mackenzie River Department, and in 
 part to later history, though it may fitly be men- 
 tioned here. On the Liard, the most wild and dan- 
 gerous of all the great eastern streams that dash 
 down from the Rocky Mountains, the earliest post 
 to be established within the confines of British Col- 
 umbia was the fort which took its name from the 
 river itself. Fort Nelson on the eastern branch, was 
 built about the same period, or shortly after the be- 
 ginning of the century. Twenty years later, Fort 
 Liard was pillaged by the Indians and its people 
 murdered. Meanwhile Fort Halkett had been found- 
 ed on a higher branch, shortly after the amalgama- 
 tion of the rival companies. In 1834, the Upper 
 Liard was ascended by McLeod to its southern 
 source in Dease Lake. It was not, however, until 
 1838 that a post was built in this remote country 
 by a Scotsman named Robert Campbell, the most 
 
 123 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 distinguished man which the place and period pro- 
 duced, and the last of the great explorers which the 
 fur trade gave to the western continent. Ordered 
 to the Mackenzie in 1834, Campbell, after his 
 operations at Dease Lake, crossed to the Pacific 
 by the Stikine. Here he was taken prisoner by the 
 Indians. On his escape, after terrible hardships, 
 Fort Dease was burned to the ground. But it was 
 not until 1840 that Campbell, under orders from 
 Sir George Simpson, undertook the journey that 
 was to make him famous. This was the ascent of 
 the northern branch of the Liard through the 
 great gorge that had previously barred all hope of 
 access to its source, Lake Frances. After a desper- 
 ate struggle, Campbell surmounted the barrier, and 
 on Lake Finlayson, a tributary reservoir, saw the 
 waters divide, part to flow into the Pacific, part to 
 begin the long journey to the Arctic. Beyond the 
 height of land he sighted the cliffs of the Pelly. 
 After descending this river a few miles he turned 
 back. The honour of naming it from himself he re- 
 fused. In the following year, with a post on Lake 
 Frances and another on Pelly Banks as a basis, he 
 again set forth, but was again compelled, this time 
 by hostile natives, to return, after reaching the 
 point where the junction of the Lewis and the 
 Pelly forms the great river of Alaska. It was not 
 until eight years later that Campbell’s efforts were 
 crowned with success. On that occasion, after 
 erecting Fort Selkirk at the mouth of the Lewis, 
 124 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 and tracing the latter to its source, he descended 
 the Yukon several hundred miles to the junction 
 of the Porcupine, where Fort Yukon, the most 
 remote of the company’s posts, lying one hundred 
 and fifty miles within the Alaska boundary and on 
 the Arctic Circle, had been built some four years 
 earlier by the trader Bell. Here Campbell united 
 his own discoveries with those made by way of the 
 lower and less difficult branches of the Mackenzie. 
 Ascending the Porcupine and crossing to the Peel, 
 he arrived by way of the Mackenzie at his original 
 point of departure, Fort Simpson on the Liard. He 
 had traversed in that great circle over three thou- 
 sand miles of river and mountain ; he had mapped a 
 huge region which before had been wholly un- 
 known; and he had given a lasting impetus to the 
 trade inland in the direction of the Russian com- 
 petitor; all with a forgetfulness of self that was 
 only equalled by the splendid courage and endur- 
 ance which the achievement demanded. 
 
 In California, the endeavour of the company to 
 secure a foothold, while Fort Vancouver remained 
 the entrepot of the department, was extended over 
 sixteen years. The descendants of the Spaniards, 
 who now held the country after throwing off the 
 yoke of Spain, had neither the enterprise to estab- 
 lish trade nor the inclination to foster it by govern- 
 ment. Fish and furs, in small quantities only, 
 found an outlet through Mexico. Nevertheless, 
 
 125 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the efforts of Russia, England, and the United 
 States, to establish trading-posts in the south, met 
 with fierce opposition. The first attempt of the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company to invade California was 
 before 1830, the valleys of the Sacramento and 
 San Joaquin having at an early date attracted the 
 attention of McLoughlin. A party sent to the 
 assistance of the American trader Jedidiah Smith, 
 who, on crossing from Salt Lake in 1827-8, had 
 been roughly handled by the Indians and had lost 
 a convoy of furs, penetrated as far as the Umpqua. 
 A second expedition, under Ogden, reached the 
 Sacramento River, and in 1835 the company estab- 
 lished a post at the junction of the Sacramento and 
 Jesus Maria. A few years served to exhaust the 
 furs of these outlying districts, and, with the desire 
 to reach still further southward, a collision with 
 Mexico became inevitable. At this contingency, 
 Douglas was sent in charge of a party to treat 
 with the Mexican governor. Sailing from Fort 
 Vancouver, December 3rd, 1840, on the ship 
 Columbia , with a crew of thirty-six and a cargo 
 of miscellaneous goods, he cast anchor at Monterey 
 on New Year’s Day, 1841. The design of the voy- 
 age was largely political, but the crew had been 
 increased by stockmen who were to drive north- 
 ward a supply of cattle. The negotiations with 
 the governor lasted until January 19th. Douglas 
 undertook to check the operations of the company 
 in the Tulare and outlying valleys, and in return 
 126 
 
SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 obtained a temporary relaxation of the law which 
 confined the coastwise trade to Mexican bottoms, 
 together with the important right for the company to 
 trade in California by express sanction of the govern- 
 ment. Fifty cents, it was agreed, should be paid by 
 the company for each beaver skin taken. San Fran- 
 cisco was immediately visited with a view to an estab- 
 lishment, not without friction with rival traders ; 
 and Douglas was back in Fort Vancouver by the 
 following May. Rae, the son-in-law of McLough- 
 lin, was recalled from the Stikine and appointed 
 to the new post, which was situated on Yerba 
 Buena Cove, in the Bay of San Francisco. Simpson, 
 then on his famous voyage around the world, and 
 McLoughlin as chief factor, visited the post soon 
 after. For two years the record of the company’s 
 transactions was the history of San Francisco, and 
 its servants made up almost the entire population. 
 With the interior a steady trade in supplies sprang 
 up. But the scale of profits from the first was 
 below the expectation of the company. Rae fell 
 ill, and in 1845 committed suicide. Forbes took 
 over the control; but the governor had already 
 decided, against the judgment of McLoughlin, to 
 abandon the post. The end came in 1846, when the 
 company sold the establishment at Yerba Buena 
 and retired forever from San Francisco Bay. 
 
 These vigorous efforts of the company in the out- 
 lying regions of the department were accompanied 
 
 127 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 by developments in the immediate neighbourhood 
 of Fort Vancouver which were of even greater 
 importance. The agreement with the Russians 
 relative to the supplying of provisions had been 
 fraught with far-reaching consequences. From the 
 first, McLoughlin, in spite of prejudice to the con- 
 trary, had recognized the agricultural possibilities 
 of Oregon. The mild and equable climate and the 
 depth and richness of the soil tempted a diversity 
 and luxuriance of growth that invited the most 
 unwilling to husbandry. In the open spaces about 
 Fort Vancouver axe and plough were set to work, 
 and corn and live-stock reared. Sheep were brought 
 from California, hogs from the Sandwich Islands, 
 and cattle from Ross. Soon a flour mill worked by 
 oxen was set up. Grist and sawmills followed on 
 the Willamette. Horse breeding for the brigades 
 became extensive. By 1835, some thirty-five hundred 
 feet of lumber were being sawn daily; while the yield 
 of grain was annually several thousands of bushels, 
 and the number of animals constantly on hand 
 several hundreds. By these activities the company 
 was saved the expense of bringing supplies through 
 the mountains or around Cape Horn. The growing 
 of grain was still a mere auxiliary to the trade in 
 peltries, and while it remained so the inherent in- 
 compatibility of the two was not apparent. In a 
 land of abundance, however, the supply soon ex- 
 ceeded the local demand. Flour and lumber from 
 the Columbia began to seek a market in the Pacific 
 128 
 
THE PUGET SOUND COMPANY 
 
 Islands. Salmon was shipped to Boston and Lon- 
 don. With the Russian treaty, and the stimulus 
 which it immediately gave to farming on the Col- 
 umbia, this new phase was accentuated. The first 
 intimation had been given, to those who could un- 
 derstand, of the final destiny of the region. Fur- 
 trading and settled industry cannot live together. 
 The company knew this full well. But, as it could 
 not alter the decree of nature, its primary concern 
 in the situation was one of organization merely — 
 the keeping of the two divisions of its activity 
 separate, now that the industrial branch gave pro- 
 mise of attaining large proportions. 
 
 To have charge of the important commercial and 
 agricultural interests of the company, a separate 
 body was deemed necessary. The formation of a 
 cattle association by some settlers on the Willa- 
 mette pointed the way ; and in 1838-9, McLough- 
 lin obtained the sanction of the directors to the 
 organization of the Puget Sound Agricultural Com- 
 pany. The new undertaking was brought into being 
 under the immediate auspices of the Hudsons Bay 
 Company, which furnished nearly all the original 
 shareholders. It was officered from the staff of the 
 parent body ; and it was expressly forbidden to deal 
 in furs. On the other hand the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany handed over all its cattle, sheep, horses and 
 farming implements to it and renounced husbandry 
 forever in Oregon. The rich and level region which 
 lay about Nisqually and between Puget Sound and 
 
 129 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the headwaters of the Cowlitz, a branch of the 
 Columbia which joins the latter about fifty miles 
 from the ocean, offered a favourable field for the 
 rearing of flocks and herds and the production of 
 wool, hides and tallow. Farms were also opened on 
 the Willamette. McLoughlin was appointed the 
 first manager; skilled farmers and shepherds were 
 brought from Canada and England ; and the com- 
 pany was finally inaugurated in 1840, with a capital 
 of £200,000 in £100 shares. Of this capital, however, 
 no more than £16,160 were found to have been paid 
 up at the time the company’s affairs were finally 
 settled. 
 
 It would seem that the enterprise suffered almost 
 from the start from a variety of opposing circum- 
 stances. Into the history of its chequered career it is 
 unnecessary here to enter, lying as the period does 
 some years in advance of the time at present under 
 discussion. The adoption of the 49th parallel as the 
 international boundary, in 1846, under circum- 
 stances to be explained further on, was a blow from 
 which the company never attempted to recover. Its 
 men deserted for the free lands of the homesteader ; 
 the natives destroyed its stock ; while the technical 
 differences between “ possessions ” and “ possessory 
 rights ” under the boundary treaty, were a source of 
 perpetual dispute between the companies and the 
 United States. An offer was finally made to sell all 
 rights and titles to the United States for 81,000,000. 
 This was not accepted, and the friction continued. 
 
 130 
 
OPERATIONS OF THE COMPANY 
 
 Again, in 1860, it was intimated, through the 
 British ambassador at Washington, that the sum of 
 $500,000 would be accepted by Great Britain on 
 behalf of the companies, and would release the 
 United States from all engagements under the 
 treaty. The company, however, maintained its 
 position until the year 1867, hoping that by con- 
 tinuing in business, though at a loss, it would make 
 good its case against the United States. In the year 
 mentioned, a commission was appointed by which 
 the various claims were at last determined. Those 
 of the Hudson’s Bay Company were settled for 
 $450,000 ; those of the Puget Sound Agricultural 
 Company, for $200,000. It was discovered by the 
 commission that the latter body was indebted to 
 the parent company in the sum of £25,000, and 
 that except at intervals it had not paid a profit to 
 the shareholders. The highest dividend declared was 
 ten per cent., and this was continued for five years 
 only, 1848-53. The last dividend paid was in 1854; 
 it amounted to five per cent. The Hudson’s Bay 
 Company had an interest as purchaser in one thou- 
 sand three hundred and eighty-six shares issued at 
 par. In 1853, the company claimed one hundred and 
 sixty-seven thousand acres at Nisqually, eighty 
 thousand acres of which were prairie land. At Cow- 
 litz, it claimed three thousand six hundred acres. In 
 1856, according to Tolmie, it had seven hundred and 
 forty acres fenced at Nisqually. Of its operations on 
 Vancouver Island there will be mention later. 
 
 131 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 McLoughlin, the first manager of the Puget 
 Sound Agricultural Company, was succeeded on 
 his retirement by Douglas, who also severed his 
 connection with the company in the year 1859, 
 upon his acceptance of the governorship of the 
 colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. 
 
 One incident in connection with the agricultural 
 operations of the company may be noted in pass- 
 ing. In 1829, when the soil about Fort Vancouver 
 was first upturned, a fearful epidemic of fever and 
 ague broke out. The whites suffered severely, but 
 the Indians fell by thousands. Typhoid, whooping- 
 cough and measles soon after made their first ap- 
 pearance. In 1833 a hospital which had been erected 
 on the Columbia had from two to three hundred 
 cases as its usual number. 
 
 Over many stirring events that had their centre 
 in Fort Vancouver, during the period in which it 
 dominated the life of the coast, this summary must 
 pass in silence. The narration might be made to in- 
 clude several daring expeditions into forest and 
 wilderness, such, for example, as that which Work 
 led in 1834 far into the wilds of Oregon, past the 
 headwaters of the Willamette, to the buffalo country 
 of the Missouri; or that of Ermatinger in 1841 to the 
 Sacramento ; or that which founded in 1832 Fort 
 Umpqua on the route between Fort Vancouver 
 and San Francisco Bay, — almost the only post at- 
 tempted by the company for purposes of general 
 132 
 
JEDIDIAH SMITH 
 
 trade south of the Columbia. Much space, too, 
 might be given to the internal development of the 
 company, and to the life that sprang up on the 
 Columbia, which under McLoughlin was perhaps 
 more striking than that in any other part of the 
 company’s domain. But the tree had no sooner 
 achieved vigorous growth than it withered before 
 the changed conditions which came with the advent 
 of the agriculturist from the United States. To 
 the important series of events that ended in the 
 permanent establishment of the United States in 
 Oregon, involving the settlement of the boundary 
 between British and American territory, the ex- 
 tinction of the fur trade between the Columbia and 
 the 49th parallel, and the removal of the com- 
 pany’s headquarters from Fort Vancouver to Vic- 
 toria, the rest of this chapter will be devoted. 
 As before, Douglas was the close spectator, if not 
 the actual director, of almost every move that was 
 taken, having risen to the rank of chief trader in 
 1832 and of chief factor in 1840, and becoming in 
 later years the forefront of the opposition offered 
 by the English company to what it soon had to 
 acknowledge was the decree of fate. 
 
 Prior to 1830, the first to cross the Rockies from 
 the United States to Oregon, since the days of the 
 Astorians, was Jedidiah Smith, who, with a band 
 of fellow trappers, entered the Snake River coun- 
 try in 1825. Since the War of 1812, it should be 
 explained, Astoria had been in the possession of 
 
 133 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the United States under an arrangement with 
 Great Britain by which the country from the 
 Mexican frontier for an indeterminate distance 
 northward was held in joint sovereignty. More con- 
 cerning this arrangement will appear later on. From 
 that time forward the possibility of the settlement 
 of Oregon by agriculturists had been debated from 
 time to time in congress ; but the awful perils of 
 the journey overland and the conflicting information 
 as to the value of the country itself led to no active 
 result. Meanwhile, as we know, McLoughlin had 
 installed the rule of the Hudson’s Bay Company at 
 Fort Vancouver and had taken virtual possession of 
 the territory north and south. Smith was a lieuten- 
 ant of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, which 
 the enterprise of the trader Ashley had made 
 famous in the great interior of the continent, and 
 which was the first to re-establish commercial com- 
 munications between the United States and the 
 territories west of the Rocky Mountains. Since the 
 dissolution of the Pacific Fur Company the trade 
 of the Upper Mississippi and the Missouri had been 
 carried on by the North American Fur Company, 
 at the head of which Astor remained, while in 1822 
 the Columbia Fur Company was formed, for opera- 
 tion in the same field, from recruits from the North- 
 West Company who were dissatisfied with the 
 terms of the amalgamation of 1821. Smith, after 
 crossing twice to the Pacific and ranging through- 
 out Northern California, was killed by Indians in 
 134 
 
AMERICAN TRADERS 
 
 1829, but not before he had led the first train of 
 waggons from the east to the base of the Rocky 
 Mountains. Sporadic expeditions followed under 
 the command of Pilcher of the North American 
 Company, Pattie of a Missouri concern, and others 
 to whom these operations acted as a spur ; but until 
 Bonneville and Wyeth came, direct collision with 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company was avoided. Smith in 
 fact, as has been noted, owed his fortune, almost his 
 life, on one occasion, to the English company, and 
 gratitude may have found a place even in the 
 breasts of warring fur traders. Bonneville, a French- 
 man by birth and a captain of the United States 
 army, having obtained in 1881 a furlough of two 
 years, led a band of one hundred men and twenty 
 waggons from the Missouri to the Columbia, where 
 he spent two years in unsuccessful contention with 
 rival enterprises, and returned having lost all. The 
 expeditions of Wyeth of Massachusetts, made 
 about the same time as that of Bonneville, were 
 conceived in more serious vein, but met with 
 scarcely greater success. Two posts were founded 
 but were almost immediately driven out by the 
 competition of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Kelly, 
 a Boston school teacher and an enthusiast in religion 
 and politics, had the merit of attracting attention to 
 Oregon by an extravagant scheme of colonization, 
 in attempting to realize which he passed through 
 extreme hardships in California and was rescued in 
 the end from his suffering by the Hudson’s Bay 
 
 135 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Company, against which, however, he continued to 
 entertain to the last an implacable hatred. Unsettled 
 in mind as he was, Kelly was nevertheless the first 
 to declare the feasibility of overland emigration from 
 the United States to the Pacific, and, in writings 
 poured forth for over a quarter of a century, to in- 
 duce ultimately some trial of the undertaking which 
 was to prove the true solution of the country’s 
 future. 
 
 By sea, during the year 1829, the ships Convoy 
 and Owyhee , both of Boston, attempted to open 
 trade with the natives of the Columbia. After a 
 years stay on the coast, the vessels took their de- 
 parture and were seen in these waters no more. The 
 Owyhee was reputed to have brought the first peach 
 trees planted in Oregon and to have carried thence 
 the first Columbia salmon to reach the Boston 
 markets. 
 
 But the most potent factor in the permanent 
 settlement of Oregon was the coming of the mis- 
 sionaries. The period was the third decade of 
 the century. The movement had its origin in an 
 incident, striking as it was touching. About the 
 time of Wyeth’s first expedition, there had ap- 
 peared at St. Louis five Indians of the Nez Perces 
 tribe who, having heard of the white man’s God 
 and His book, had come to ask that men be sent 
 to teach their people concerning them. The story 
 of their quest found its way into the press and was 
 re-echoed throughout the churches of the land. To 
 136 
 
THE MISSIONARIES IN OREGON 
 
 one Jason Lee, a Methodist preacher, the call came 
 as from Macedonia of old. With his nephew Daniel 
 Lee and three lay brethren, he joined the second ex- 
 pedition of Wyeth which was at the moment em- 
 barking on its perilous march. In July 1834, Lee 
 preached his first sermon in Oregon. With McLough- 
 lin’s aid, he planted his first mission on the Willa- 
 mette, where a few retired servants of the company 
 had already, by permission, established themselves 
 and were employed chiefly in herding cattle. The 
 mission soon became the nucleus of a permanent 
 colony drawing recruits continuously from beyond 
 the mountains. It was the first settlement of United 
 States citizens on the Columbia having other than 
 a commercial object in view. Before another year 
 had elapsed, Lee was followed by the Presbyterian 
 missionaries Parker and Whitman, the latter being 
 joined by his wife. Spaulding and Gray came in 
 1836. The tribes of the Upper Columbia were 
 now evangelized, Whitman settling in the valley of 
 the Walla Walla and Spaulding in the Nez Perces 
 country, and still further knowledge of the country 
 was distributed in the Eastern States. Whitman, 
 especially, from the moment of his arrival in 
 Oregon, was untiring in his agitation for the in- 
 clusion of the country in the United States territory; 
 and his establishment among the Cayuses soon 
 formed a gateway through the mountains for the 
 straggling lines of the settlers, which from this time 
 forward, as a result largely of his efforts, began to 
 
 137 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 flow in ever-increasing numbers from the east to 
 the Columbia. Whitman’s famous ride from Oregon 
 to Washington over the snow, in 1843, that he 
 might superintend the immigration of the following 
 year, is the most stirring deed of the whole move- 
 ment. He returned with a thousand people. Schools 
 for the education of the natives were opened ; and 
 in 1839 a printing press was set up at Walla Walla 
 on which were struck off the first sheets ever 
 printed on the Pacific slope of America north of 
 Mexico. The Jesuit missionaries, who came in 1838 
 from Canada, penetrated throughout the region, 
 but had little effect on immigration. 
 
 To notice in detail the various steps by which the 
 intermittent bands of settlers attracted by the mis- 
 sionaries to Oregon swelled into a great national 
 movement ending in the occupation of the country 
 by the United States, would be beyond the scope 
 of the present chapter. Disconnected and unim- 
 portant at first, the different strands were in a 
 measure gathered into a self-conscious whole in 
 1837, with the formation in the United States of 
 the first societies for the promotion of emigration to 
 Oregon. From that time forward the inflow was con- 
 tinuous, gathering volume with time. Perhaps no 
 better view of the varied nature of the movement 
 and of the manner in which its different constitu- 
 ents were intermingled, is obtainable than that pre- 
 sented by the following extracts from a document 
 prepared by McLoughlin himself : 
 
 138 
 
THE SETTLEMENT OF OREGON 
 
 “This year,” he writes, with reference to 1836, 
 “the people in the Willamette formed a party and 
 went by sea with Mr. Slacum to California for cat- 
 tle, and returned in 1837 with two hundred and fifty 
 head. In 1836, the Rev. Mr. Leslie and family, ac- 
 companied by the Rev. Mr. Perkins, another single 
 man, and a single woman, came by sea to reinforce 
 the Methodist Mission. In 1837 a bachelor and five 
 single women also came by sea to reinforce the 
 Methodist Mission; and three Presbyterian minis- 
 ters came across land with their families, while 
 their supplies came by sea. Two of these mission- 
 aries settled in the vicinity of Colville, the other in 
 the Nez Perces country. In 1838, two Roman 
 Catholic missionaries came from Canada. This year 
 the Rev. Mr. Griffin of the Presbyterian Church, 
 with his wife, came across land from the States by 
 way of the Snake country. There came with him 
 also a layman of the name of Munger, and his 
 wife .... In 1839 a party left the state of Il- 
 linois, headed by Mr. Farnham, with the intention 
 of exploring the country and reporting to their 
 countrymen who had sent them. Four only reached 
 this place. Three remained, Mr. Farnham returning 
 to the States by sea and publishing an account of 
 his travels. Messrs. Geiger and Johnson came this 
 year, sent, as they said, by people in the States to 
 examine the country and report. Johnson left by 
 sea and never returned. Geiger went as far as Cali- 
 fornia and returned here by land .... In 1840, 
 
 139 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the Rev. Mr. Clark of the Presbyterian Church 
 with his wife, and two laymen with their wives, 
 came across land on the self-supporting system, 
 but, as their predecessors, they failed, and are now 
 settled on the Willamette. In 1840, the Rev. Mr. 
 Jason Lee, who had gone in 1838 across land to 
 the United States, returned by sea in the Laus- 
 anne, Capt. Spaulding, with a reinforcement of 
 fifty-two persons, ministers and laymen, women 
 and children, for the Methodist Mission, and a 
 large supply of goods with which the Methodist 
 Mission opened a sale shop. In 1841, the American 
 exploring squadron, under Captain Wilkes, surveyed 
 the Columbia River from the entrance to the Cas- 
 cades, and sent a party across land from Puget 
 Sound to Colville and Walla Walla, and another 
 from Vancouver to California. At the same time 
 the Thomas Perkins , Captain Varney, of Boston, 
 entered the Columbia River for the purpose of 
 trade. . . . 
 
 “ In the spring, the Rev. Father De Smet of 
 the Society of Jesus came to Vancouver from 
 the Flat Head country where the year before 
 he had established a mission from St. Louis. He 
 came for supplies, with which he returned to his 
 mission. In August, the Rev. Messrs. Langlois and 
 Bolduc came by sea. In the month of September, 
 one hundred and thirty-seven men, women, and 
 children arrived from the States. They came with 
 their waggons to Fort Hall, and thence packed their 
 140 
 
ARRIVALS IN OREGON 
 
 effects on horses and drove their cattle. ... In 
 the fall, eight hundred and seventy-five men, 
 women, and children came from the States by 
 the same route as last year, bringing one 
 thousand three hundred head of cattle. These 
 came to The Dalles, on the Columbia River, with 
 their waggons, drove their cattle over the Cas- 
 cades by the same route as those of last year to the 
 Willamette, and when the road was blocked by 
 snow proceeded along the north bank of the Col- 
 umbia to Vancouver, where they crossed the river 
 to the Willamette, bringing down their wives, child- 
 ren, and property, on rafts, in canoes which they 
 hired from the Indians, and in boats belonging to 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company, lent them by me. 
 
 The Rev. Father Deros [Demers] of the 
 
 Society of Jesus, came this year with two other 
 fathers of the same society and three laymen and 
 established a mission in the Colville district. Lieu- 
 tenant Fremont, of the United States service, came 
 with a party to examine the country. After purchas- 
 ing supplies from the Hudson’s Bay Company, he 
 rejoined his party at The Dalles, and proceeded 
 . across land to California. In 1844, the immigrants 
 amounted to one thousand four hundred and seventy- 
 five men, women and children. They came by 
 the same route and were assisted by me with 
 the loan of boats, as their predecessors of last 
 
 year The Belgian brig, Indefatigable , 
 
 also anchored there. She was the only vessel that 
 
 141 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 hitherto came under that flag, and brought the Rev. 
 Father De Smet, with four fathers of the Society of 
 Jesus, and five Belgian nuns of the Society of Sis- 
 ters of Our Lady. The fathers came to reinforce 
 their mission in the interior in the Flat Head 
 country and to establish others, and the nuns 
 to build a convent and open a school for young 
 females in the Willamette.” 
 
 Data for ascertaining the numbers that came 
 across the plains to Oregon, from the year 1840 
 until the fixing of the international boundary, are 
 incomplete and unsatisfactory. It has been estim- 
 ated that at the close of 1841 there were in the 
 neighbourhood of four hundred citizens of the 
 United States in Oregon. For 1842, the estimates 
 range, on good authority, from one hundred and 
 five to one hundred and thirty-seven immigrants; 
 while in the following year not less than eight 
 hundred and seventy-five to one thousand came 
 into the country. The number fell to seven hun- 
 dred in 1844, but rose to three thousand in 1845, 
 during the period that immediately preceded the 
 final settlement of the controversy between Great 
 Britain and the United States concerning the 
 boundary. In 1846, the movement again fell off, 
 this time to about one thousand three hundred and 
 fifty. 
 
 The climax of the movement, in a political sense, 
 came in 1844. From the time of the missionaries, 
 the influx had taken on the characteristics of a 
 142 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF OREGON 
 
 great national propaganda for the annexation of 
 Oregon to the United States. The settler conveyed 
 a clearer title to the soil than the fur trader; the 
 settler, therefore, under the existing conditions was 
 a patriot as well. Of the intricacies of the debate 
 between Great Britain and the United States con- 
 cerning the division of Oregon, some review will 
 be given later; it is sufficient here to advert to the 
 political significance of the immigration movement 
 and to the fact that this significance was under- 
 stood by every one who took part in it. By 1844, 
 enough strength had been gathered for a definite 
 declaration of policy on the spot. Political organiza- 
 tion of some sort had, moreover, become expedient. 
 A provisional government was accordingly erected 
 on the Willamette, representative entirely of the 
 American element — for the British held aloof — 
 and established on the understanding that it would 
 exist only until the United States extended its 
 jurisdiction to the country. It had an executive of 
 three and a legislature of eight. It passed several 
 laws; but the bowie knife and pistol remained the 
 most effective engines in bringing delinquents to 
 justice. For two years the unique experiment was 
 continued, until the treaty of 1846 erected Oregon 
 into a territory of the American union. 
 
 A word may be added with regard to the course 
 observed by the Hudson’s Bay Company towards 
 the settlers from the United States. It was indeed 
 a difficult situation; on the one hand, suffering men 
 
 143 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 and women, the terrible passage of the plains 
 having left nearly all the earlier settlers in a 
 state of destitution and defencelessness; on the 
 other, the loss of the country to the trade. Yet 
 there can be no doubt that to missionaries and 
 immigrants alike the attitude of the company was 
 one of kindness and hospitality. How much of this 
 was due to McLoughlin is a question hard to 
 answer. The significance of the influx was never 
 misunderstood; and if upon McLoughlin the bit- 
 terness of the losing battle fell, the fact remains 
 that when Douglas succeeded to his place no 
 change in policy followed. Perhaps it was then too 
 late ; though in any event the movement was irresist- 
 ible from the first. To rival traders, of course, no 
 quarter was given; they were fought with every 
 weapon which the wealth and long experience of 
 the company had placed in its hand, and with un- 
 varying success. Ingratitude on the part of those 
 who had received its bounty is hard to account 
 for. Yet it is a fact that the ill-will which Mc- 
 Loughlin incurred from the company for befriend- 
 ing the settlers, excused as it might be by the 
 heavy losses sustained through the policy which he 
 had adopted, was more than equalled by the 
 hatred with which he was pursued by some of those 
 whom he had rescued from death in its most 
 terrible forms, whom he had fed, clothed, and 
 supplied with the means of obtaining a liveli- 
 hood, and for whom he risked his own future 
 144 
 
FORT VANCOUVER ABANDONED 
 
 with the company. Political passion alone can 
 account for this perversion. A year before the 
 Oregon boundary had been finally determined, 
 McLoughlin, the picturesque and admirable, the 
 “great white eagle” of the Pacific slope, had been 
 forced from his command ; and Douglas, more rigid 
 in his obedience, though no more able, as it proved, 
 to stem the tide, ruled in his stead. 
 
 Such, in outline, was the nature of the move- 
 ment which, by peopling the country south of the 
 Columbia with a race that tilled the soil, drove 
 out the hunter and the trapper, its discoverer and 
 first occupant. In this way was solved the vexed 
 problem of sovereignty in Oregon. Thenceforward 
 the vast hiatus between the Alleghanies and the 
 Rockies was bridged by the tie of a common 
 nationality at either end ; and the foot of the repub- 
 lic was planted firmly once and for all on the shores 
 of the. Pacific. With the year 1846, the British 
 frontier was moved back to the 49th parallel, ex- 
 cept for the portion of Vancouver Island which lay 
 below that line and for the possessory rights which 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company and others retained in 
 the Columbia valley, Britain having maintained 
 throughout that the Columbia formed the proper 
 boundary between the countries. Fort Vancouver 
 remained until 1849 as a post of the company; but 
 the glory had departed. Coming events had cast 
 their shadow before ; and the removal of the bound- 
 ary did not find the company unprepared. Three 
 
 145 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 years before the final settlement, a fort had been 
 established within the shelter of the new lines, 
 to inherit the prestige of Vancouver as the com- 
 pany’s emporium on the Pacific, and to form the 
 nucleus of the new political and social life that was 
 to spring up with the definite determination of the 
 national frontier. This was Victoria on Vancouver 
 Island, founded by James Douglas in 1843. The 
 event and its immediate results were of such impor- 
 tance, both to the fur trade and the country, as to 
 merit a chapter to themselves. Before approaching 
 this part of the subject, however, it will be of in- 
 terest to describe more fully that famous contro- 
 versy between Great Britain and the United States 
 concerning the Oregon boundary, some further 
 reference to which is necessary in immediate con- 
 nection with the foregoing, and of which the estab- 
 lishment of Victoria, though forestalling it in point 
 of time, was largely in the nature of a result. 
 
 146 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE OREGON BOUNDARY 
 
 T HE fundamental elements of the memorable dis- 
 pute between Great Britain and the United 
 States concerning the Oregon boundary have been 
 set forth incidentally in previous chapters. It will 
 be well, however, before discussing the negotiations 
 which brought the contest to an end, to recall in 
 rapid review the more crucial of these early events, 
 the significance of which bulked large in the argu- 
 ments of later times and combined with much that 
 was new to determine the ultimate destiny of the 
 Pacific coast. 
 
 It has been described how, in the first half of the 
 sixteenth century, Spain alone of the European 
 nations — partly by virtue of the Papal bull, partly 
 in overweening power — followed a career of conquest 
 in the New World. How she was brought in due 
 course to the Pacific, and how, after the plunder of 
 Mexico and Peru, her sailors buffeted their way 
 along the coast to the 50th parallel of latitude, was 
 also dealt with. If such discoveries conveyed a title 
 to the soil, Spain’s sole disturber in these early 
 days was the Englishman Francis Drake, whose 
 descent upon New Albion was the less vexatious 
 because, like the Spaniards themselves, he was gone 
 almost as soon as he had come. As a matter of fact, 
 
 147 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the coast above the 42nd parallel was still to all in- 
 tents an undiscovered country when, more than a 
 hundred and sixty years after Drake and Viscaino, 
 the expeditions of Perez, Heceta and Quadra first 
 gave to Spain what might be called a title to the 
 shore south of the 58th parallel. Cook’s voyage, 
 the discoveries of the Russians, and the rise 
 of the British trade in sea-otter, have been re- 
 ferred to at some length in the foregoing. The 
 result of the advent of Great Britain in these 
 waters was the collision at Nootka, the final set- 
 tlement of which pricked forever the bubble of 
 Spain’s pretensions to exclusive ownership in the 
 Pacific, the coast being thrown open to the vessels 
 of both nations for trade, navigation and settle- 
 ment, while each was given the right of access to 
 the stations of the other. Vancouver’s careful 
 survey, the investigations of Quimper, and the dis- 
 covery of the Columbia by Gray followed, Gray’s 
 exploit becoming in later years the strongest argu- 
 ment with which the United States contested her 
 claim to Oregon. Soon after, the epoch-making ex- 
 pedition of Mackenzie overland opened the way to 
 the first permanent settlement west of the Rocky 
 Mountains. Of the part played by American navi' 
 gators, who for a decade after 1800 monopolized 
 the trade of the coast, and the momentous series 
 of incidents that grouped themselves about the 
 Louisiana purchase, including the expedition of 
 Lewis and Clark and the founding of Astoria, full 
 148 
 
TRANSFER OF ASTORIA 
 
 mention has already been made. With this review 
 by way of brief reminder, the negotiations that 
 led to the first formal understanding between 
 Great Britain and the United States — the powers 
 who in the process of time inherited the tangled 
 skein of claim and counter-claim to Oregon — may 
 be outlined from the beginning. 
 
 Upon the close of the War of 1812, it had been 
 agreed 1 between Great Britain and the United 
 States that territory taken by either nation in the 
 course of the hostilities should be restored to its 
 original owner. No allusion was made to the country 
 west of the Rocky Mountains, nor were boundaries 
 anywhere defined. Astoria, which had been pur- 
 chased in 1813 by the North-West Company from 
 its founders, remained in the possession of the 
 British traders. There had been features, however, 
 in connection with the transfer of that famous post, 
 which imparted to the transaction a significance out 
 of the ordinary. It will be remembered that the sale 
 was made by agents who, though employees of the 
 American company, were British by birth and 
 sentiment ; that it took place in the expectation of 
 the arrival of an overpowering British force ; and 
 that, almost immediately upon the consummation 
 of the purchase, the British sloop of war Raccoon 
 took possession of the post, over which the British 
 flag was raised, the name being at the same time 
 changed to Fort George. How much or how little 
 
 x B 7 the Treaty of Ghent, December 24th, 1814. 
 
 149 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 of the contiguous territory attached to the fort was 
 always an open question. The bearing of these in- 
 cidents was not lost sight of in the United States. 
 No definite action was taken, however, until 1817, 
 when the right to be reinstated on a national basis 
 at Astoria was formally put forward, on the ground 
 that the circumstances attending the transfer of 
 1813 amounted virtually to belligerent capture, and 
 that the restoration of the fort was therefore in- 
 cluded in the treaty which closed the war. After a 
 brief demurrer, the claim was admitted by Lord 
 Castlereagh for England, — completely and uncon- 
 ditionally, it was afterwards urged by the United 
 States, though probably in the first instance with 
 the idea merely of acknowledging the right of the 
 United States to be regarded as the party in 
 possession while discussion of the title to the ad- 
 joining territory was in progress. It should be ex- 
 plained that by the prolonged inactivity of Spain, 
 the absorption of Russia in her northern trade, 
 and the elimination of France by the purchase of 
 Louisiana, the United States had by this time 
 divided with Great Britain the leading interest in 
 the region. The American flag was accordingly 
 raised again over the site of Astoria, though 
 the English company remained in possession for 
 several years longer. Herein, it may be said, was 
 the beginning of that irritating controversy between 
 Great Britain and the United States which, after so 
 many years of disquietude tinged with bitterness, 
 150 
 
THE TREATY OF 1818 
 
 ended in the loss to the former of a territory of 
 singular value. ^ 
 
 From the restitution of Astoria to the next stage 
 of the proceedings was but a step. While the armed 
 vessel despatched by the United States to take 
 over the post was still upon the seas, a. negotiation 
 had been begun at London between plenipotentiar- 
 ies of the two powers, for the adjustment of various 
 matters left untouched by the Treaty of Ghent. 
 Among these was the question of the claims of the 
 respective countries to the territory west of the 
 Rocky Mountains. The United States, it appeared, 
 did not assert a perfect title to that region ; but she 
 insisted that her claim was at least good against 
 that of Britain. Great Britain was no less inclined 
 to consider her own rights as antedating those of 
 any other power, at least in the country north of 
 the Columbia. Messrs. Rush and Gallatin for the 
 United States, and Messrs. Robinson and Goul- 
 burne for Great Britain, conducted the deli- 
 berations. There was an exchange of superficial 
 argument, which did little more than confirm 
 the situation established by the restoration of 
 Astoria a few months previously. An agreement 
 in which the deadlock that had now been 
 reached stood fully revealed was at last arrived at, 
 October 20th, 1818. Under its terms, neither 
 nation was granted exclusive sovereignty in the re- 
 gion lying between the 42nd and 55th parallels; 
 both, however, might trade or establish settlements 
 
 151 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 at unoccupied points ; each was granted a rightful 
 title to the posts it had already built ; and either 
 might interfere to protect its subjects in local 
 quarrels. The agreement was limited to ten years. 
 Roth nations hoped, ere the period was ended, to 
 strengthen their respective rights to possession: 
 England by the actual occupancy of her fur traders; 
 the United States by the inevitable expansion of 
 the republic across the mountains, if, as was still 
 in doubt, the Pacific F ur Company should not rise 
 from its ashes. By both, therefore, the treaty was 
 construed as a victory. Yet it settled nothing; it 
 merely launched the question upon the uncertain 
 sea of the future, to drift whithersoever the currents 
 of chance might carry it. 
 
 With the year 1818, therefore, and the conclusion 
 of the agreement above mentioned, the Oregon 
 boundary question stood forth in clear-cut outline 
 before the nations upon whom time had laid its 
 solution. There was great ignorance, great indiffer- 
 ence concerning it; but for the twenty-eight years 
 of its troubled existence, though much that was 
 new in argument was brought to bear from time to 
 time, the issue itself remained unchanged. Great 
 Britain held throughout that the boundary should 
 follow the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains 
 to the Columbia, descending the river thence to the 
 sea ; the United States claimed the entire coast 
 from California to Alaska as of right, but were at all 
 times willing to agree that the boundary should 
 152 
 
TREATIES WITH SPAIN AND RUSSIA 
 
 follow the 49th parallel to the Pacific. Only the 
 more important phases of the question and of the 
 arguments employed as it passed through the mazes 
 of diplomacy can be touched upon in the following 
 paragraphs. 
 
 On February 22nd, 1819, the Florida treaty was 
 signed between the United States and Spain. The 
 treaty, apart from its main object, dealt largely 
 with the boundary between Louisiana and Spanish 
 territory. This, it was agreed, should follow the 
 42nd parallel from the headwaters of the Arkansas 
 to the Pacific. North of that line the Spanish title 
 to the coast was vested in the United States — a 
 provision that led to much searching of records 
 later, in the endeavour to determine the value of the 
 title thus transferred. Soon after, negotiations as to 
 spheres of influence were begun by the United 
 States with Russia, whose arm had stretched as 
 far south as the California coast. As a result, a 
 treaty was obtained in 1824 which fixed the line 
 of 54° 40' as the limit beyond which neither 
 nation was to found establishments without per- 
 mission of the other. In the year following, as 
 has been already noted, a similar boundary was 
 agreed upon by Russia and Great Britain, with this 
 difference, that the claim of the latter to the in- 
 terior country extending northward to the Arctic 
 Ocean was at the same time admitted. Some at- 
 tempt at a joint conference between the three 
 powers had previously failed, in part through 
 
 153 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 emotions raised by the promulgation of the Monroe 
 doctrine. Meanwhile negotiations between Great 
 Britain and the United States were re-opened in 
 London, the situation being in this way cleared 
 for the renewal of the argument as between these 
 countries alone. Spain, Russia and France, the re- 
 maining powers who, at one time or other, had held 
 claims to varying portions of the coast, were now 
 finally eliminated from the controversy. 
 
 For over three years the recrudescence of the 
 question in this simplified form provoked a vigour 
 of discussion that was exceeded only during the 
 closing stages of the dispute, still some eighteen 
 years in the future. Great Britain was represented 
 by Huskisson and Stratford Canning, the United 
 States by Rush. A claim to exclusive ownership by 
 the latter, based on the Spanish transfer, the dis- 
 coveries of Gray, and the founding of Astoria, and 
 backed by a reference to the Monroe doctrine, led 
 to an immediate impasse. A debate in congress 
 soon after, in which a proposal was made to 
 occupy the Columbia by a military force, had the 
 result of bringing for the first time unequivocally 
 into light the latent feeling of the British cabinet 
 with regard to Oregon, as a territory not worth 
 fighting for, though not to be relinquished in a 
 manner repugnant to British pride. Unfortunately, 
 the knowledge of this soon passed to the American 
 camp. When the negotiations were resumed in 
 1826, Gallatin succeeding Rush, and Addington 
 154 
 
THE SETTLEMENT OF 1827 
 
 taking the place of Canning, the revelation had un- 
 doubted weight in obtaining an arrangement which 
 virtually perpetuated the agreement of 1818. For 
 both parties a compromise of the sort might again 
 be interpreted as a victory. Great Britain retained 
 the advantages of actual possession, which since the 
 War of 1812 had been complete, and the prospective 
 profits of the fur trade. The United States might 
 still reflect with satisfaction that the settler, who 
 alone would confer a permanent interest in the land, 
 was far more likely to come from the republic 
 than from England. No loss of dignity was 
 sustained on either side ; and to break an amicable 
 and profitable arrangement for a mere title of 
 possession would, as Greenhow remarks, have been 
 foolish as well as unrighteous. The knowledge and 
 acumen displayed by both parties in the notes ex- 
 changed during the closing stages of the negotiations 
 were well-nigh perfect, being in strong contrast 
 with the slip-shod information that did service in 
 the protocols of eight years previously. They were, 
 of course, of no avail in modifying the result, except 
 in one particular: the arrangement of 1827 was 
 made subject to abrogation at any time by either 
 party upon twelve months’ notice. The matter 
 thereupon relapsed for over ten years longer into a 
 state of calm. 
 
 But if parliament, congress, and the diplomatic 
 corps heard nothing of the controversy during that 
 interval, the question was far from slumbering. By 
 
 155 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the irresistible march of events, it had in fact been 
 brought before the tribunal whose judgment was 
 to be final. The Oregon boundary had at last be- 
 come a popular question. Reference has been al- 
 ready made to that stream of settlement which, be- 
 ginning soon after 1830, had, within the decade and 
 a half which followed, sent thousands of American 
 farmers into the valleys south of the Columbia. The 
 United States, with the knowledge gained in 1827, 
 saw in this the fulfilment of her expectation. There 
 was no need now of armed occupation ; every 
 settler was a soldier, and his wife and family part of 
 an American garrison. Much matter was silently 
 gathered, in the way of settlers’ petitions and re- 
 ports of missionaries and traders, against the day of 
 final reckoning. A little later, congress was able to 
 add to this the call of the provisional government 
 erected in Oregon in the anticipation of an immedi- 
 ate extension of United States sovereignty. Popular 
 murmurings grew meanwhile into a shout. Pamph- 
 lets and books were multiplied apace. With skilful 
 repression, however, the issue was excluded from 
 the negotiations held with Lord Ashburton in 
 1842 which had for subject the north-eastern 
 boundary. But with that victory won, the flood of 
 passion was no longer stemmed. Tyler’s conciliatory 
 language in 1843, served but as fuel to the flame. 
 The exchange of views in 1844 and later, between the 
 British minister Pakenham and Messrs. Calhoun and 
 Buchanan for the United States, revealed only a 
 156 
 
THE FINAL SETTLEMENT 
 
 modification of the previous arguments, except for 
 the altered tone of the American proposals. The 
 Baltimore platform of 1844, on which Polk was 
 elected president, declared the title of the United 
 States to the “ whole of Oregon ” to be “ clear and 
 unquestionable,” and “ fifty-four forty or fight ” be- 
 came the shibboleth of half a nation. The “ whole 
 of Oregon,” it may be repeated, meant the entire 
 region between California and Alaska, three 
 quarters of which had been discovered and explored, 
 and were now held, by the British fur traders. 
 Popular clamour alone forced a claim of this 
 magnitude upon the government, which as the 
 event proved, was ready enough to agree to a com- 
 promise. Polk as president, did what he was elected 
 to do in the matter of Oregon. Arbitration was re- 
 fused on the ground of the difficulty of securing an 
 unbiassed tribunal in monarchical Europe. The 
 chances of war were freely canvassed in both 
 countries, and there was bluster on both sides. 
 Moderate language, however, was at all times pre- 
 served in the official correspondence. In the end, a 
 simple notice of the abrogation of the existing 
 treaty was served upon England, who at once pro- 
 posed the 49th parallel as the boundary from the 
 mountains to the middle of the channel which 
 divides Vancouver Island from the mainland, the 
 line to run from that point southerly by the middle 
 of the same channel to the Pacific. Clauses were 
 added giving certain rights of navigation to Great 
 
 157 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Britain on the Columbia, and safeguarding the pro- 
 perty of the Hudson’s Bay and Puget Sound Agri- 
 cultural Companies in the territory south of the 
 49th degree. The suggestion was at once accepted 
 by the United States. The boundary, it was found 
 by the orators, was wonderfully adapted to the 
 natural divisions of the two countries, parting the 
 two great watersheds of the Fraser and the 
 Columbia with the same accuracy that it divided, 
 east of the mountains, the rivers flowing into Hud- 
 son Bay from those that fall into the Gulf of Mexico. 
 It had, indeed, been part of Gallatin’s argument 
 in 1826-7 that the 49th parallel divided the dis- 
 puted frontage on the Pacific into two nearly equal 
 parts, whereas, if the Columbia were accepted as the 
 boundary, less than one-third would accrue to the 
 United States. Better, however, than its geograph- 
 ical excellence, appreciation of which can scarcely 
 be looked for in Canada, the new boundary repre- 
 sented the peaceful solution of a long and trying 
 difficulty, the arbitrament of which by war between 
 two kindred peoples would have been an unspeak- 
 able calamity, however much it may be regretted 
 that more of justice had not mingled with the terms 
 of settlement. 
 
 Such, in the essentials, was the manner in which 
 that famous controversy concerning the division of 
 Oregon arose, raged, and was finally placed at rest. 
 Its dust has long been laid ; and there is no desire 
 on any hand to disturb it. It is necessary, however, 
 158 
 
ACQUISITION OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 in this place, to note, in addition to the foregoing, 
 something of the matter as well as the manner of 
 the contest, now that the smoke of it has rolled far 
 off and the facts are as we may assume they will 
 remain. The wealth, indeed the endless diffuseness, 
 of the material has been remarked. It permits a 
 perfect view of the opposing claims as they ap- 
 peared to their exponents, and furnishes as well a 
 comprehensive means of classifying those opinions 
 according to the accepted principles of international 
 usage. 
 
 Sovereignty over new territory may be acquired 
 by a nation in five ways: by discovery; by settle- 
 ment; by contiguity; by treaty; and by prescrip- 
 tion. All acts upon which a claim to sovereignty 
 may be based must, of course, be those of a gov- 
 ernment and not of unauthorized individuals. The 
 aquisition of territory is a grave act, imposing as a 
 necessary consequence upon the state acquiring it 
 the manifold duties of administration. Private per- 
 sons cannot assume such responsibilities, and their 
 discoveries, settlements or treaties confer no bene- 
 fits and impose no obligations upon the state from 
 which they have proceeded. In the light of these 
 principles let us notice some of the claims of the 
 several powers which at one time or other possessed 
 an interest in Oregon. 
 
 Discovery (which may be grouped with settle- 
 ment in this brief resum£) in itself does not convey 
 a perfect title in international law. It is the first 
 
 159 
 
 » 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 step to a title — an “inchoate act of sovereignty”; 
 but it must be followed by possession and settle- 
 ment; and the settlement must be continuous and 
 permanent. If occupation lapses for any reasonable 
 length of time, the title lapses with it. As to the 
 discovery of much of the north-west coast, Spain 
 might undoubtedly claim that honour; and the 
 establishment of Nootka was designed to confer the 
 added right of possession and occupation. But it 
 was never acknowledged that this single settle- 
 ment could hold so vast a region, or that the voy- 
 ages of Cook and others might not also rank as 
 voyages of discovery. The convention of Nootka 
 gave to England in 1790 equality with Spain in 
 north-western America. That Gray and Lewis and 
 Clark were the first to reach the lower waters of 
 the Columbia was undeniable; as it was equally 
 undeniable that the northern and principal branch 
 was first seen by Thompson, and that Meares 
 and Vancouver had preceded Gray on the coast, 
 though they had not sighted the great river itself. 
 Again, if the founding of Astoria preceded the 
 British posts of the upper river, those of New Cale- 
 donia preceded both. As to the question whether 
 the operations of fur-trading associations, such as 
 the North-West and Hudson’s Bay Companies, con- 
 stituted occupation in the sense recognized by in- 
 ternational usage, the view in general of the United 
 States was that they did not. Yet the establishment 
 at Astoria was in no sense different to the posts of 
 160 
 
DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT 
 
 the British companies, and the United States from 
 the moment of the restoration sought to base on it 
 a claim to the adjacent territory, notwithstanding 
 the immediate protest of England that the settle- 
 ment was an encroachment on British dominions. 
 
 The territory to which the post of a fur trader 
 might constitute a claim would seem to depend 
 upon the radius of influence exerted. The Russian 
 settlement in California, for example, was never 
 made the basis of a claim for territory. Moreover, 
 Gray’s ship was a trading and not a national vessel, 
 and the first exploration of the lower Columbia, as 
 distinct from its discovery, was made by Broughton, 
 an Englishman. Astoria also, according to the 
 British view, was a purely private enterprise, and 
 its foundation not to be construed as occupation in 
 a national sense. The Hudson’s Bay Company, on 
 the other hand, possessed at least a quasi-official 
 existence, under royal charter and an assurance of 
 protection from the British government. It exer- 
 cised judicial functions in respect to civil and 
 criminal processes over its servants, while the juris- 
 diction of the Canadian courts of law extended 
 over the entire country coterminous with the limits 
 of the company’s franchise. It engaged in the cul- 
 tivation of the soil before a single immigrant from 
 the United States had planted foot in Oregon. 
 Gallatin, who denied that any claim to sovereignty 
 could arise out of the occupation of the country by 
 mere fur-trading corporations established for the 
 
 161 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 purpose of traffic alone, admitted that the modest 
 factory at Calcutta had grown into the British 
 Empire of India, having an undisputed rule over 
 hundreds of millions of people — in other words that 
 the force of international law in this connection 
 takes its colour largely from attendant circum- 
 stances. Such as it was, the British occupation of 
 the Columbia, after the War of 1812, and especially 
 after the amalgamation of the North-West and 
 Hudson’s Bay Companies in 1821, was complete. 
 During the decade after the restoration of Astoria, 
 scarcely an American trader was seen in the 
 country or on the coast, notwithstanding that in the 
 meantime the introduction of steam vessels on the 
 Mississippi and the Missouri had greatly improved 
 facilities for communication. From 1813 until 1837, 
 in fact, the quiet and almost exclusive use of the 
 Columbia was enjoyed by Britain. Even in the final 
 stages of the controversy the American settle- 
 ments were entirely on the southern bank of the 
 Columbia, while the British posts lay both north 
 and south. At an early date, however, Great Britain 
 threw away whatever benefits she might have won 
 by reason of this occupation, when she placed her- 
 self on record as waiving any claim to exclusive 
 sovereignty over any portion of the country be- 
 tween the Columbia and the 49th degree, and as 
 standing simply for joint occupancy while the right 
 to exclusive domain remained in abeyance. “ The 
 qualified rights which Great Britain now possesses 
 162 
 
CONTIGUITY 
 
 over the whole of the territory in question ” wrote 
 Huskisson and Addington in 1826, “ embrace the 
 right to navigate the waters of those countries, the 
 right to settle in and over any part of them, and the 
 right to freely trade with the inhabitants and occupiers 
 of the same. It is fully admitted that the United 
 States possesses the same rights, but beyond they 
 possess none.” The restoration of Astoria was not, 
 according to Great Britain, in any sense a relin- 
 quishment of title in the surrounding territory. But 
 the practical effect of the admission above was that 
 the nation who first occupied the country with 
 settlers should be entitled to exercise those rights of 
 sovereignty which possession of this kind commonly 
 bestows. How time fought the battle of the United 
 States in this has been already shown. 
 
 Contiguity has been defined as of two kinds — 
 perfect and imperfect. The first involves the right 
 of a nation to exclude all others from a territory 
 the command of which, though actually not within 
 her boundaries, is essential to her convenience and 
 security. It was not, of course, contended that a 
 foreign settlement west of the Rocky Mountains 
 would threaten the welfare of the Atlantic seaboard. 
 The United States had no Pacific commerce to pro- 
 tect, and at no time prior to 1846 was the possession 
 of Oregon essential to her safety or existence. The 
 report of General Jesup to a select committee of 
 congress in 1823, to the effect that the command 
 of the Columbia was necessary for protection from 
 
 163 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the tribes of the frontier, revealed even in its re- 
 commendations that the more immediate gain in 
 contemplation was the dispossession of the British 
 traders. The other title of contiguity has been de- 
 fined as a preferable right to acquire lands, which, 
 though they may be neither settled nor necessary 
 for convenience or defence, are geographically one 
 with the acquiring nation. In this connection it was 
 urged that Oregon belonged more naturally to the 
 United States than to any other power. From the 
 earliest attempts at colonization in America, the 
 whole breadth of the continent between certain 
 parallels of latitude was ordinarily granted to 
 colonies established only at points on the borders 
 of the Atlantic. Moreover, it could not be doubted 
 that, after 1835, Oregon and Texas offered the most 
 natural outlet for the rapidly growing population of 
 the United States, in view especially of the pre- 
 vailing opinion that the adjoining central division 
 of the continent offered no inducements to settlers. 
 Nevertheless it should be borne in mind that even 
 from the United States, Oregon, in the words of Cal- 
 houn, was distant more than thirteen thousand 
 miles by sea, a voyage, in 1846, of six months, and 
 more than two thousand miles by land, a march of 
 one hundred and twenty days. That Louisiana 
 originally extended to the Pacific was denied by Ad- 
 dington. But that the territory under dispute lay as 
 much in the path of the British crossing from the 
 Peace and Saskatchewan as of those who traded from 
 164 
 
TREATY RIGHTS 
 
 the Mississippi and Missouri was also insisted upon. 
 As a matter of fact, the free navigation of the 
 Columbia was in the early years essential to the 
 maintenance of the British trading-posts in the in- 
 terior, south as well as north of the 49th parallel, 
 and was the basis of that vigorous attempt to bring 
 the whole coast northward under British trade in- 
 fluence, the success of which has been described. 
 Colonization from Britain or Canada was not for 
 the time thought possible. The latter had no re- 
 dundance of population, and to both more suitable 
 fields lay closer at hand. At the very moment, in 
 fact, the United States themselves were drawing 
 steadily from Britain her surplus population in a 
 stream that could not easily have been diverted to 
 other channels. 
 
 Much was made in the course of the dispute of 
 the bearing of various treaties upon the rights in- 
 volved. The Treaty of Ghent, in its application to 
 Astoria, has been already referred to. The conven- 
 tions between Russia and England, and between 
 Russia and the United States, also, need not be 
 further mentioned. Debate raged fiercest about the 
 Florida treaty of 1819. What was the nature of the 
 title derived from Spain by that treaty? By the 
 United States it was regarded as perfect against 
 that of any other European power at the time of 
 transfer. By England it was denied that Spain had 
 any title whatever to convey in 1819. The explan- 
 ation of this diversity of opinion dates back to the 
 
 165 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Nootka convention and the war which broke out 
 between England and Spain in 1796 and continued 
 with only a short intermission until 1809. Granting 
 that the Nootka convention admitted Great Britain 
 to certain rights on the north-west coast, it was held 
 by the United States that the convention was an 
 instrument of a commercial nature merely, that the 
 right then granted to England to found settlements 
 did not involve the conveyance of sovereignty to 
 any part of the region, and that in any other event 
 the convention had been terminated by the sub- 
 sequent wars. In 1819, according to this view, the 
 United States fell heir to the original right of 
 Spain to the exclusive ownership of the coast. To 
 this the British rejoinder was that the convention 
 was not a merely temporary or commercial con- 
 cession ; that it destroyed rather than implied the 
 exclusive title of Spain; that the settlements per- 
 mitted were quite compatible with local sovereignty; 
 and in general that the title which Spain had failed 
 to make good in 1790 and which Great Britain 
 had successfully challenged at the moment of its 
 greatest strength, could not now be revived simply 
 because of an agreement with a third power, the 
 more so that, for over a quarter of a century, it had 
 fallen into complete disuse. After her formal aban- 
 donment of the coast in 1795, Spain’s only right was 
 one which she shared in common with England and 
 the United States; the only right, therefore, that she 
 could convey in 1819 was one which the latter al- 
 166 
 
PRESCRIPTION 
 
 ready possessed. As to the Louisiana purchase, this 
 was never successfully maintained as affecting boun- 
 daries west of the Rocky Mountains, unless as an 
 argument from contiguity; moreover, Louisiana in 
 1790 belonged to Spain and was therefore included 
 in the provisions of the Nootka convention and in the 
 later considerations applying to the title of Spain. 
 
 Out of the right of contiguity, perfect and imper- 
 fect, it might be contended that the United States had 
 evolved the last of the rights above mentioned — 
 that of prescription. To prescription the application 
 of the Monroe doctrine was akin. By the free and 
 independent condition which the American contin- 
 ents had assumed, they were no longer, according 
 to the Monroe doctrine, to be considered as subjects 
 for colonization by European powers. But the future 
 colonization of Oregon, it had been agreed, would 
 determine the destiny of the region. So far as the 
 doctrine applied to South America, which had re- 
 cently cast off the yoke of Spain, Great Britain 
 sympathized with its object and was prepared to 
 support it. In the case of the Oregon question, 
 however, it had the effect merely of rendering the 
 British government much less disposed to conces- 
 sion, while tending to produce a union of views, 
 approaching almost to a league, between Great 
 Britain and Russia, which in the result proved of 
 distinct disadvantage to the United States. 
 
 An effort to apply the cumulative principle to 
 the arguments of the United States under the above 
 
 167 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 headings was made during the negotiations of 1827. 
 If, separately, objection might be made to each, con- 
 sidered together they were believed to establish the 
 American claim on a solid foundation. To this the 
 reply was that the claims based on discovery, ac- 
 quisition from Spain, and contiguity, were in many 
 respects incompatible the one with the other, and 
 could not, therefore, be united. If, for example, the 
 title of Spain by first discovery, or that of France, 
 as the original owner of Louisiana, were advanced, 
 it was evident that one or other of these countries 
 held the territory at the time of Gray’s discoveries, 
 and that the latter therefore could not be put 
 forward as conferring a claim. If, however, the 
 importance of Gray and the Astorians was 
 emphasized, by so much were the Spanish or 
 French titles diminished. The device of admitting 
 imperfections in the several elements in order to 
 give strength to the aggregate was, therefore, in the 
 present case, of little avail. The United States, in 
 counter- reply to this, argued that, though in differ- 
 ent hands the several claims would conflict one 
 with the other, they supported each other when 
 united in the same power. 
 
 Great Britain has been bitterly censured by a 
 school of opinion in Canada for the loss of Oregon 
 between the 49th parallel and the Columbia. The 
 charge has this foundation: that it is possible 
 to perceive how the country might have been 
 168 
 
IGNORANCE CONCERNING OREGON 
 
 saved. It will be well, however, to be explicit on 
 this point. In the final analysis, lack of knowledge 
 of the value of Oregon, by inducing a perfectly 
 natural but by no means logical apathy as to its 
 political future, was probably the cause of the loss, 
 if lost that may be called which was never held in 
 undisputed possession. For lack of knowledge on 
 the part of Great Britain there was abundant ex- 
 cuse. The whole of the western continent which 
 she held, disputed and undisputed alike, was in the 
 grasp of men whose guiding purpose was to per- 
 petuate the mystery in which the land had been 
 wrapped from the beginning. England’s attitude 
 throughout the controversy was simply that of 
 champion to her fur traders whose outposts had 
 been threatened with invasion, to which in process 
 of time was added the consideration of national 
 pride. Moreover her ignorance of the country must 
 be considered relatively. It was at least no greater 
 than that of the United States until a comparatively 
 late stage of the dispute. Jefferson almost alone in 
 the early days of the republic showed real know- 
 ledge of the importance of the west, or at least of 
 the diplomacy by which it was to be won. As late 
 as 1844, when the controversy had entered its most 
 acrimonious phase, Greenhow, the historiographer 
 of congress, one of the most learned authorities on 
 the subject, appraised as practically valueless the 
 territory in dispute, though he wrote the most able 
 of the treatises put forth in the behalf of the United 
 
 169 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 States to prove the latter’s title to the land in 
 question. Gallatin, the American commissioner 
 to England in 1826-7, shared the common view. 
 In the early debates in congress opinions were 
 freely expressed as to the worthlessness of the 
 country. Webster had none of the popular 
 enthusiasm concerning Oregon, at a time when the 
 name was a slogan thoughout the United States. 
 The mass of the people before 1840 knew little and 
 cared less about Oregon. The ignorance of Great 
 Britain, therefore, is not remarkable. To the British 
 nation at large, Oregon was no more than a 
 name. A writer in the Edinburgh Review of July 
 1845 reflected the best informed public sentiment 
 of his day when he said : “ It seems probable that in 
 a few years all that formerly gave life to the 
 country, both the hunter and the prey, will become 
 extinct, and their place will be supplied by a thin 
 white and half-breed population, scattered along 
 the few fertile valleys, supported by the pasture in- 
 stead of by the chase, and gradually degenerating 
 into the barbarism, far more offensive than that 
 of the savage, which degrades the backwoodsman.” 
 Again : “ The great error of all parties has been 
 the importance attached to Oregon.” And again : 
 “ It is much that the real worthlessness of the 
 country has been established. All that any prudent 
 Englishman or American can wish is, that the con- 
 troversy should be speedily and harmoniously 
 settled.” Still more remarkable were the conclusions 
 170 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 of the same writer as to the future of Oregon : 
 “ However the political questions between England 
 and America as to the ownership of Oregon may 
 be decided, Oregon will never be colonized overland 
 from the United States .... Whoever is to be the 
 future owner of Oregon, its people will come from 
 Europe.” 
 
 Let it be said, moreover, that once the question 
 assumed practical importance, England displayed 
 both keenness of interest and firmness of purpose 
 in handling it. That she had recourse in 1846 to 
 every resort short of war is undeniable. But the 
 truth is, her point of view had been mistaken from 
 the first, and the battle was lost before ever it came 
 to be fought. Diplomacy, as it proved, could avail 
 nothing in dealing with an issue of this nature once 
 it had arisen. Three opportunities had been pre- 
 sented when, by a decisive stroke, the region might 
 have been won : in the settlement of the Nootka 
 affair ; in the treaty which closed the War of 1812 ; 
 and in 1818. Each time a compromise was accepted 
 in the interest of a “ speedy and harmonious ” settle- 
 ment and in the mistaken trust that the future 
 would strengthen the hands of Great Britain ; 
 each time the door was left open for further con- 
 troversy ; each time the renewal of the dispute 
 found the position of Great Britain weakened. In 
 striking contrast was the subtle and far-seeing 
 diplomacy of the United States, which from the 
 first permitted no ignorance of the present and 
 
 171 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 actual to preclude appreciation of the future and 
 potential. When the time for final settlement 
 arrived, there had been added to this general prin- 
 ciple of acquisition for its own sake all the weight 
 of established industrial interests, of an awakened 
 public opinion, and of an inflamed and prejudiced 
 national spirit. Popular clamour alone was respon- 
 sible for the claim to the “ whole of Oregon,” — a 
 claim that became serious only when party politics 
 seized upon it as an issue. England who had bred and 
 fostered Cook, Vancouver and Mackenzie, was, in 
 this view, nothing less than a usurper throughout 
 the coast ; while the Hudson’s Bay Company, which 
 had saved the first American settlers from starva- 
 tion and murder by the Indians, was but a greedy 
 and inhuman monopoly, the willing tool of a 
 government that was now attempting the crime 
 of grand larceny from the United States. Such was 
 the temper of the American press and people when 
 the issue was for the last time joined and lost. But 
 the loss should bear the date, not of 1846, but of 
 that earlier time when the first failure was record- 
 ed either to appreciate the splendid destiny which 
 awaited the region, or to grasp the means which 
 would have brought it permanently under British 
 influence. 
 
 The foregoing brief review of the facts and prin- 
 ciples involved in this historic controversy will at 
 least have shown that the issues, obscured as they 
 172 
 
EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 had been by clouds of witnesses and a mass of con- 
 flicting testimony in which personal interests and 
 national prejudices were alike intermingled, proved 
 simple enough, once the final stage had been reached 
 and the circumstances had forced the countries to 
 an agreement. By these circumstances and not by 
 any theories of international jurisprudence, was the 
 fate of Oregon decided. In 1840 the question was 
 as far from solution as ever. The arguments from 
 history and law had been exhausted long ago. No 
 exclusive right could be established by either party 
 as the case then stood. The superior advantages 
 which Great Britain at one time held, she had long 
 since waived, and had been content to trust the 
 future to its own developments. These had now 
 matured. The great nation of the Atlantic seaboard 
 was by every instinct of its origin and by every 
 dictate of the policy in which its early steps had 
 been directed, a nation of expansionists on this 
 continent. From clearing to clearing, from settle- 
 ment to settlement, from township to township, 
 and at last from state to state, its inevitable way led 
 westward. Even its missionaries were pioneers of 
 empire. As Canaan became the land of Israel, so 
 the United States possessed Oregon. It was of in- 
 finitely greater value to her than to Great Britain 
 in 1846. No president or government, it would be 
 safe to say, could have consented then to less than 
 was received by the United States, no matter what 
 rights of others were involved. War only could 
 
 173 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 have maintained Great Britain in Oregon. Of a 
 war, after serious thought, she considered Oregon 
 not worth the price. Thus ended it. 
 
 / 
 
 174 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 VICTORIA 
 
 T HE year 1843 was a turning point in the history 
 of the north-west coast. Fate had by that 
 time unequivocally declared that the north and not 
 the Columbia must be the final abode of the fur 
 trade and the nation whose protection it enjoyed. 
 The company read the signs of the times, and had 
 begun to prepare for the inevitable. Long before the 
 boundary had been named, the desirability of shift- 
 ing the chief seat of the trade northward had be- 
 come manifest. It was impossible to secure peltries 
 on the Columbia in the face of increasing settle- 
 ment; and for some time past a point of strategic 
 and commercial advantage, beyond reach of the 
 conditions that were rendering Vancouver unten- 
 able, had been diligently sought by the company. 
 
 There were many reasons why Camosun , 1 the 
 Indian village on the site of which the city of 
 Victoria now stands, should have attracted the at- 
 tention of the traders. Esquimalt , 2 where a more 
 commodious harbour exists, might have been 
 deemed more suitable for a city ; it was not, how- 
 
 1 Spelled “Camosack” by Douglas, who gives the native interpreta- 
 tion as u rush of waters.” By others the name is derived from Camass, 
 a plant with an edible root, greatly in favour of the Indians, and 
 abundant in the vicinity of Victoria. 
 
 2 u Iswhoymalth ” in the spelling of Douglas. 
 
 175 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 ever, a city that the company thought to establish, 
 but a post for the prosecution of the fur trade. As 
 early as 1837, McNeill had explored the southern 
 end of Vancouver Island and had found an excel- 
 lent harbour and fine open country, apparently well 
 adapted for tillage and pasturage, along the shore. 
 Simpson himself, during the voyage previously re- 
 ferred to, had noted the fertile soil, the abundance 
 of timber, and the equable climate of Camosun, and 
 had predicted that the place would become in time 
 “the most valuable section of the coast above 
 California.” Douglas, finally, in 1842, had made a 
 careful examination of the locality and had reported 
 favourably. The agricultural possibilities of the re- 
 gion, which rendered the vicinity of Fort Van- 
 couver of such value, were insisted upon, the re- 
 quirements of the Puget Sound Company having 
 now to be consulted no less than those of the Hud- 
 son’s Bay Company proper. On the whole, the 
 directorate in London had unrivalled information 
 at its command before resolving on any change. 
 McLoughlin, Douglas, Work, Ogden, Tolmie, 
 Finlayson, Anderson and McNeill formed a body 
 of men whose local knowledge might he regarded 
 as perfect; while at home the company’s manage- 
 ment included several to whom every project in 
 the councils of the nation was well-known. Fortified 
 with the approval of both London and Vancouver, 
 official sanction to the establishment of a fort at 
 Camosun was soon given. The new post would be 
 176 
 
FOUNDING OF VICTORIA 
 
 near the ocean, yet protected from it. A great island 
 lay to the northward ; and to a huge continent it 
 formed the natural entrepot. It stood at a crossways 
 of the waters, to the west being the Strait of J uan 
 de Fuca, to the south Puget Sound, and to the 
 north the Gulf of Georgia. It commanded the 
 first good harbour north of San Francisco, the en- 
 trance to the Columbia having proved difficult even 
 to the ships of that period. Some idea, too, of 
 the trade possibilities of Alaska, the Northern In- 
 terior, the Orient, the Pacific Islands, and South 
 America, doubtless crossed the minds of the men 
 who sat in the council chamber of Lime Street, 
 London. Moreover, it was a point of great natural 
 beauty, Victoria taking rank to-day as the most 
 picturesque of all the cities of the Pacific shore. 
 
 The expedition which was dispatched to establish 
 the post set sail from Fort Vancouver on March 
 1st, 1843. It consisted of fifteen men, and it was 
 under the command of James Douglas. Nisqually 
 and the Cowlitz country were visited for supplies ; 
 and at New Dungeness the Indians were noti- 
 fied of the intended action of the company. Cross- 
 ing Fuca Strait, the party cast anchor within Shoal 
 Point on March 14th. According to tradition, the 
 spot on which Douglas first landed was knee-deep 
 in clover at the time, from which it received the 
 name by which it is still known — Clover Point. The 
 native Songhees, who had a stockade at the head of 
 the harbour, showed surprise, but no hostility, sur- 
 
 177 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 rounding the steamship Beaver , which had brought 
 the party, with a swarm of welcoming canoes. 
 
 Considerations of detail at once engaged the at- 
 tention of Douglas. The selection of a site and the 
 obtaining of a supply of timber for the projected fort 
 were the first steps necessary. The question of an 
 anchorage apparently decided the former, the post 
 being placed where the present Court House of 
 Victoria stands on Bastion Square. A steamer of 
 the draught of the Beaver found no difficulty, in 
 1843, in casting anchor off the site of the present 
 wharf of the Hudson’s Bay Company. By March 
 16th, the men were already at work squaring tim- 
 bers and digging wells. The natives, pleased at the 
 prospect of trade, were given employment making 
 pickets, each picket to be twenty-two feet long and 
 three feet in circumference, axes and other tools be- 
 ing lent them for the purpose and payment being 
 made at the rate of one blanket for forty pickets. 
 These preliminaries under way, Douglas steamed 
 northward in April to Forts Taku and McLoughlin, 
 which it had been decided at headquarteis to aban- 
 don, and the crews of which were needed to aug- 
 ment the scanty force at Fort Camosun. 
 
 With Douglas to Victoria came Bolduc, the 
 Jesuit missionary, reputed the first priest to set 
 foot on Vancouver Island. The natives proved ready 
 converts ; over twelve hundred Songhees, Clallams 
 and Cowichans were baptised after the first mass, 
 178 
 
ERECTION OF FORT CAMOSUN 
 
 which was celebrated in a chapel of pine branches 
 and boat’s canvas on March 19th, 1843. Bolduc 
 afterwards passed to Whidby Island, where, though 
 conversions were numerous, attempts to reform the 
 habits of the savages met with indifferent suc- 
 cess. By April 3rd, the missionary was back at 
 Nisqually. 
 
 It was on the first of June that the Beaver re- 
 turned from her northern voyage. Taku and Mc- 
 Loughlin had been dismantled, and with the rein- 
 forcements thus obtained some fifty men were 
 available for the work at Camosun. Within three 
 months, in the prevailing pleasant weather, the 
 stockade, one hundred and fifty yards square and 
 eighteen feet in height, with blockhouse or bastion 
 (thirty feet high and armed with nine-pounders, 
 blunderbusses and cutlasses), at each corner, was 
 finished. As finally completed, the stores, five in 
 number, together with the post-office, smithy, 
 carpenter shops, sleeping quarters for the men, 
 officers’ quarters, chapel, powder magazine, etc., 
 were all within the stockade. For the sake of 
 economy, the fort was built without nails or spikes, 
 wooden pegs alone being used. The site selected 
 was an open glade of oak trees, in the midst of the 
 dense forest which ran down to the harbour and in- 
 let. Flocks of Indians from Vancouver Island, the 
 neighbouring archipelago, and the mainland, atten- 
 tively watched proceedings, but in the face of con- 
 
 179 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 stant vigilance offered no opposition beyond acts of 
 petty theft. Later they too began to erect lodges 
 along the harbour bank. The schooner Cadboro 
 arrived with further supplies from Fort Vancouver 
 while the work was in progress ; and by October, 
 Douglas, regarding the establishment as capable of 
 self-defence, set sail with the Beaver and Cadboro 
 for the Columbia. Charles Ross, who had been in 
 charge at Fort McLoughlin, was left as senior officer, 
 with Roderick Finlayson, transferred from Fort 
 Simpson, second in command. Finlayson, whose 
 duties included the supervision of construction 
 operations, thus became the first builder of houses 
 on Vancouver Island. 
 
 A word apart should surely be spared in honour 
 of those staunch and trim little vessels, the Cadboro 
 and the Beaver , whose doings have already figured 
 prominently in this narrative. F or nearly forty years 
 their names appear in almost every record of the 
 company’s seaward movements. Every island and 
 canal of that dangerous labyrinth of waters which 
 lies, a by- word to sailors, between Sitka and Fort 
 Vancouver, was known to their captains as a book. 
 The schooner Cadboro , seventy-two tons burden, had 
 been built at Rye in 1824. Before her destruction in 
 1862, every soul but one of the thirty servants of 
 the company whom she brought on her maiden 
 voyage from England had been buried. With her 
 picked crew of thirty-five and her six guns, she did 
 180 
 
RODERICK FINLAYSON 
 
 the work of many men in the spread of civilization 
 on the Pacific. The Beaver , which had the unique 
 distinction of being the first steamship to navigate 
 the great western ocean, was also built for the 
 company in Great Britain. In August 1835, with 
 her escort, the Columbia , she was pointed for Cape 
 Horn, rounding which she buffeted her way north- 
 ward for four months under sail, her machinery not 
 being installed until she reached Fort Vancouver. 
 Built of live oak and teak, with engines the best 
 of their day, for forty-three years of hard and con- 
 stant usage she plied the thousand bays and 
 estuaries of the coast. She was still sound in every 
 timber in spite of adventures innumerable with rock 
 and reef when, on a dark night in 1888, she met her 
 doom at the entrance to Burrard Inlet. 
 
 In the spring of 1844, Ross, who was in charge at 
 Fort Camosun, died, and Finlay son was appointed 
 in his stead, the son of Ross being sent as second in 
 command. Of Scottish birth, Finlayson had joined 
 the company in 1837, and had seen hard service at 
 Taku, Stikine and Simpson. Shrewd and kindly, 
 he had commended himself to Douglas by his rigid 
 devotion to duty. His narrative of the events that 
 culminated in the founding of Fort Camosun is 
 among the most valuable of the contemporary 
 documents that have survived and are available re- 
 lative to the history of the north-west coast during 
 the first half of the nineteenth century. 
 
 181 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Events proceeded smoothly at Camosun for some 
 time after the accession of Finlayson. The first seri- 
 ous test of the defences of the post arose through 
 the restlessness of the neighbouring Indians. 
 Directly opposite the fort, at a distance of four 
 hundred yards, lay the village of the Songhees, 
 under their chief Tsilalthach. Communication was 
 constant between the points by means of boats. 
 A wandering band of Cowichans under Tsoughilam 
 were encamped near by. The cattle of the fur- 
 traders feeding in the open spaces about the fort, 
 proved too great a temptation to the savages and a 
 number were slaughtered and eaten. The company 
 had not made the animals, they averred, nor did it 
 own the fields that fattened them. A demand for 
 payment provoked at first surprise, then anger, 
 ending in a united but ineffectual attack upon the 
 fort. Finlayson contented himself in reply with re- 
 vealing the deadly powers of the company’s nine- 
 pounders by blowing to pieces a lodge from which 
 he had previously taken care to remove the oc- 
 cupants. The effect was instantaneous ; on the fol- 
 lowing day full payment for the cattle was made. 
 Shortly after, danger from fire having been caused 
 in the vicinity of the fort, Finlayson compelled the 
 Indians, not without angry parleyings, to remove 
 to the other side of the harbour, thus originating 
 the present Indian reserve at Victoria. In the spring 
 of 1845, again, a party of Skagits from the main- 
 land coming to trade at the fort were waylaid by 
 182 
 
GROWTH OF SHIPPING 
 
 the Songhees at Clover Point and their goods stolen. 
 Whereupon Finlay son again interfered and com- 
 pelled the restitution of the goods. A demonstration 
 of the powers of the great gun being a second time 
 asked for, Finlayson directed that a canoe be placed 
 in the harbour opposite the bastion. Pointing the 
 canon at the object, he fired, the ball passing 
 through and bounding to the opposite shore. The 
 lesson had its effect. 
 
 Next in importance to relations with the Indians 
 in the early, annals of the post was the birth 
 and progress of its shipping. It was in the spring of 
 1845 that the first vessel consigned to Fort Victoria 1 
 direct from England arrived in the harbour. This 
 was the bark Vancouver belonging to the company. 
 With the Cowlitz and the Columbia she made yearly 
 voyages thereafter from London, bringing outfits 
 for a twelvemonth in advance. In the same year 
 also occurred the visit of the frigate America with 
 Captain the Hon. John Gordon, brother of the 
 Earl of Aberdeen, then Prime Minister of England, 
 on board. Gordon’s mission was to examine into and 
 report on the value of Oregon, including Vancouver 
 Island, the controversy concerning which with the 
 United States was at the moment entering upon its 
 final stage. An incident related by Finlayson of his 
 visitor’s ill-success at salmon fishing gave currency 
 
 ir The native title was retained until 1845, the change being first to 
 “ Albert ” and later in the same year to ‘ f Victoria.” 
 
 183 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 to the popular fiction that Oregon was lost to Britain 
 because the sockeye would not rise to a fly. That 
 Gordon’s prejudices, however, and the unfavourable 
 impression carried away by his party concerning the 
 Columbia valley did not assist the home authorities 
 in attaching a proper importance to the country, 
 may be assumed. From the year 1845, also, the 
 American whalers of the North Pacific touched 
 occasionally at Victoria for supplies, until the 
 Hawaiian Islands were found to afford a more con- 
 venient port of call. About the same time, while 
 the cry “ fifty-four forty or fight,” was still reecho- 
 ing through the United States and excitement ran 
 high in Great Britain as well, H.M.S. Constance , 
 with five hundred men and officers, arrived at 
 Esquimalt. Finlayson seized the opportunity for a 
 military display, for the sake of the effect upon the 
 Indians. The frigate Fisguard also visited Victoria 
 in the same year and exercised her men on shore 
 with a similar object in view. Two surveying ships, 
 the Herald and Pandora came in the following 
 season, and re-mapped the Straits of Juan de Fuca, 
 the harbours of Esquimalt and Victoria, the Canal 
 de Haro and other waters. These and other ships of 
 war despatched for the protection of national rights 
 were supplied with beef and vegetables from the 
 farms of the company. Meanwhile the general trade, 
 which during the preceding twenty years had con- 
 verged upon the Columbia and Fort Vancouver, 
 came gradually more and more to centre at Victoria. 
 
 184 
 
FARMING OPERATIONS 
 
 The farming operations of the company had 
 engaged attention from the first. Even before the 
 fort itself had been completed, a number of men 
 were set to work at clearing the surrounding land for 
 the raising of vegetables and cereals. Wooden im- 
 plements alone were available the first year, an ex- 
 ample of the thrift of Douglas, and the corn was 
 trodden out by cattle in the barn. Some of the 
 younger natives were employed at the work, prov- 
 ing useful ox-drivers. They were paid, as usual, in 
 goods. Horses and cattle were imported later from 
 Nisqually, by the ever active Beaver and Cadboro , 
 and a farm of several hundred acres was eventually 
 opened in the immediate vicinity of Victoria. In all, 
 the company’s farms on the island were three in 
 number; the Fort Farm as it was called, on the level 
 space where the city now stands; Beckley Farm, in 
 the neighbourhood of James Bay; and the North 
 Dairy Farm, which was situated inland. The latter, 
 as the name would imply, was devoted chiefly to 
 dairying which would seem to have received 
 special attention; three dairies, each with seventy 
 milch cows, producing seventy kegs of butter 
 each in a season, being in full working order 
 within four years of the beginning of operations. 
 Oats, barley, pease and potatoes were also raised; 
 and forty bushels of wheat to the acre was a not 
 uncommon yield. The price obtained for the latter 
 from the Russians was four shillings and twopence 
 per bushel, paid by bills on St. Petersburg. A large 
 
 185 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 wooden building, long to be seen at the com- 
 pany’s wharf at Victoria, was used as a granary, 
 wherein the grain from Fort Vancouver, Puget 
 Sound and Langley, as well as that grown on the 
 island itself, was held for shipment to Sitka. Both 
 Russian and British vessels were engaged in the 
 traffic. The profitableness of the agricultural ven- 
 ture on Vancouver Island was assured throughout 
 by the abundant supply and cheap price of labour. 
 The natural increase of the cattle, moreover, was 
 such that it was soon found impossible to herd 
 them, many escaping into the woods, where they 
 were found years afterwards by hunters in the in- 
 terior of the island. 
 
 In 1848, the brigades from the northern interior, 
 instead of descending to the Columbia by way of 
 Kamloops and Okanagan as usual, followed the 
 more direct route of the Fraser Valley to Lang- 
 ley. A year before the settlement of the Ore- 
 gon boundary, Anderson, who was then in charge 
 at Alexandria, had foreseen the necessity of the 
 change and had carefully explored the country 
 between Kamloops and the Lower Fraser, not- 
 withstanding the stupendous obstacles interposed 
 by nature. Fort Yale was founded as a result 
 in 1848 and Fort Hope a short time later. For 
 the decade which followed these events, the main 
 route to the interior lay from Langley to Fort 
 Hope by water, thence by trail across the defile 
 of the Coquihalla River to the Thompson. 
 
 186 
 
DEATH OF McLOUGHLIN 
 
 The completion of this arrangement marks all 
 but the end of Fort Vancouver. With the levying 
 of American duties, its days were numbered. The 
 great McLoughlin had passed from the scene, the 
 victim, as has already been described, of forces which 
 he had neither the will nor the power to resist. To 
 curb his influence, a board, of which Douglas and 
 Ogden were the other members, had been appointed 
 some time earlier for the management of the 
 Western Department. The end came in 1846 when 
 his resignation followed a report by a commission 
 sent by the British government to make inquiry in- 
 to the military conditions of Oregon, with a man- 
 date from the company as well. Douglas there- 
 after became the senior officer of the Western De- 
 partment, McKay being given the supervision of 
 the northern posts which till then had been under 
 the immediate eye of Douglas. McLoughlin passed 
 to Oregon City, then rising at the falls of the 
 Willamette. Sorrow ended his days. He had re- 
 nounced, after the quarrel with the company, his 
 allegiance to Great Britain. But his new country- 
 men would have none of him. His lands were taken 
 from him by the United States and restitution de- 
 ferred until he himself was beyond caring. He 
 was the patriarch, as Whitman was the martyr, of 
 Oregon. There was a time when a word from Mc- 
 Loughlin would have hurled the American immi- 
 grant across the mountains and left to the United 
 States no other alternative but a conquest by arms. 
 
 187 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Yet who would name him traitor? His humanity 
 lifts him above common men. 
 
 With the year 1849 an important period is 
 reached in the history of Victoria and British 
 Columbia. With the events of that year and their 
 immediate results, the city enlarges into a colony. 
 Briefly, these events included the final removal of 
 the chief emporium of the company from Fort 
 Vancouver to Victoria ; the discovery of gold in 
 California; the opening of the first coal mines on 
 Vancouver Island; the acquisition of Vancouver 
 Island by the Hudson’s Bay Company; the conver- 
 sion of the island into a Crown colony; and the 
 appointment of a governor from England. To 
 each of these developments in turn a word must 
 be given. 
 
 The abandonment of Fort Vancouver was 
 marked by the removal of Douglas with his wife 
 and family to Victoria. They came by the ship Cad- 
 boro, having crossed by horses from the Columbia 
 to Puget Sound. The family at first took up its 
 abode in the fort, in the absence of a separate 
 residence for the chief factor. Finlayson, on the 
 assumption by Douglas of the chief command, was 
 made the head accountant for the Western Depart- 
 ment, a position which he held until 1862. Another 
 notable arrival of the year was the Rev. R. J. 
 Staines, of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, who came as 
 188 
 
GOLD IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 chaplain to the company, and whose eccentricities, 
 tribulations and death form a strange mixture of 
 the ridiculous and the tragic. Helmcken, the future 
 speaker of the legislature and son-in-law of Douglas, 
 was a second arrival of the same year. Victoria 
 henceforth became the centre of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company’s interests west of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Victoria being after San Francisco almost the only 
 point on the north Pacific coast from which supplies 
 could be obtained, the effect of the gold discoveries 
 of 1848-9 in California on the life of the place was 
 immediate. Prices rose to an exorbitant degree at 
 San Francisco and the miners employed the winter 
 months, when work on the placers was impossible, 
 in the search for a cheaper market. Finlayson 
 mistook the first contingent for pirates. Their 
 mission explained, however, they were allowed to 
 purchase such goods as were less immediately re- 
 quired for the company’s trade at the rate of eleven 
 dollars per ounce for their gold. Gold in its native 
 state had never before been seen by Finlayson, and 
 the transaction gave him serious doubts until he had 
 communicated with headquarters. The reply receiv- 
 ed was that more goods would be sent for the new 
 demand. The traffic however, was not without its 
 disadvantages, as the excitement caused among the 
 company’s employees seriously disorganized the ser- 
 vice, a large number leaving for the diggings, while 
 the pay of others had to be increased in order to in- 
 
 189 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 duce them to remain. Indians were employed to re- 
 place the stragglers. Finlayson himself was offered 
 a thousand dollars a month to take charge of a store 
 in San Francisco, an offer which he declined, for 
 the reason that though his salary was but one 
 hundred pounds per annum from the company, he 
 was under an engagement to give twelve months’ 
 notice before quitting the service. 
 
 In 1849, the development of the first coal mine 
 in British Columbia was begun. Outcroppings of 
 the mineral had been noted years before in several 
 localities ; at Beaver Harbour, where Fort Rupert 
 was erected after the abandonment of Fort Mc- 
 Loughlin, considerable quantities had been known 
 to exist. Fort Rupert was uncompleted when 
 Michael Muir, a Scottish miner, with his wife, a 
 family of sons and daughters, and a small party of 
 miners, was sent by the company to establish 
 workings on the deposits. Upon sinking a shaft 
 ninety feet, however, Muir declared the seam too 
 small to be workable, and, complications with the 
 Indians arising, the miners left for California. The 
 Muir shaft was continued later to a depth of one 
 hundred and twenty-five feet, but without favour- 
 able result. Additional and better mining machinery 
 arrived in 1851, but more promising deposits having 
 been disclosed by the Indians at Nanaimo, the plant 
 was removed thither, and the beginning of what was 
 destined to be one of the most important industries 
 190 
 
TRANSFER OF VANCOUVER ISLAND 
 
 of the Pacific slope was made. The famous Douglas 
 seam was located in 1852. In the same year, Fort 
 Nanaimo was erected in the neighbourhood. Two 
 thousand tons were shipped in the following year, 
 bringing eleven dollars per ton at Nanaimo, and 
 twenty-eight at San Francisco. Coal outcroppings 
 were subsequently discovered at various points on 
 the island, on the contiguous coast of the mainland 
 and on the Queen Charlotte Islands, but the fields 
 in the vicinity of Nanaimo were the only ones on 
 the coast that became of commercial value. The 
 Muir family, it would seem, retired eventually from 
 the service of the company, as the names of five of 
 them are attached to a petition of the independent 
 settlers which was presented to the first governor of 
 the colony on his departure for England. 
 
 There remains to be dealt with the highly im- 
 portant series of incidents that group themselves 
 about the acquisition of Vancouver Island by the 
 Hudsons Bay Company, the first attempt at 
 colonization, and the first and tentative establish- 
 ment of civil government. The three divisions of 
 the subject are inextricably interwoven. 
 
 In 1838, the license which had been granted to the 
 company in 1821 to trade, to the exclusion of all 
 other British subjects, in the territory owned by 
 Great Britain north and west of Canada and the 
 United States, was renewed, with certain important 
 additions, for a further period of twenty-one years. 
 
 191 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 The additions bound the company among other 
 things to enforce the execution of criminal pro- 
 cesses, and to frame rules and regulations for the 
 moral and religious improvement of the Indians. 
 To the government the right to erect colonies or 
 provinces within the territories included in the 
 grant was retained, together with the privilege of 
 applying thereto any form of civil government, in- 
 dependent of the company, which might be deemed 
 proper. Though this license, as will be seen, did not 
 expire until 1859, the question as to the policy to 
 be adopted by the government with regard to 
 the colonizing of the country arose at a much 
 earlier date. Almost immediately upon the arrange- 
 ment of the international boundary, the example 
 afforded by events on the Columbia had its effect 
 in England. Immigrants were pouring into that 
 favoured region, towns were springing into being, 
 and industry was expanding with a speed that was 
 full of meaning to the overcrowded population of 
 Great Britain. From the company’s standpoint 
 also, the moment was an anxious one. There seemed 
 every prospect that the wave of settlement which 
 had driven the trade north of the 49th parallel 
 would follow it even further. The company’s con- 
 duct in Rupert’s land, moreover, had recently come 
 in for severe criticism. Yet concessions must be ob- 
 tained if the monopoly was to be saved with any 
 semblance of its old-time power. Closely in touch as 
 the directorate was with the official mind of Great 
 192 
 
OFFER OF HUDSONS BAY COMPANY 
 
 Britain, it was realized that the time for action was 
 before the settler had appeared and the subject had 
 achieved prominence. It was shrewdly perceived 
 also that the company would best attain its object, 
 not by opposing colonization, which was now seen 
 to be inevitable, but by securing control of the 
 colonizing process so that it might retard or direct 
 it at pleasure. The government was, therefore, ap- 
 proached with a proposal on the part of the com- 
 pany to undertake the rule and colonization of its 
 various territories in North America. The magni- 
 tude of the suggestion apparently startled the 
 cabinet, which, with the recent troubles of Lord 
 Selkirk’s colony on the Red River in mind, had 
 now clear knowledge of the relations which the 
 settler bore to the fur trader. The negotiations were 
 suspended, in something not unlike alarm; where- 
 upon the company adroitly diminished its proposals 
 to include only the territory west of the Rocky 
 Mountains. Failing that, even Vancouver Island 
 alone, it was intimated, would be accepted. Colon- 
 ization, the company affirmed as a part of its sugges- 
 tion, would be assisted in every way possible, and 
 all moneys received for lands or minerals would be 
 applied to the improvement of the country. The 
 question was considered by the government with 
 reference solely to Vancouver Island. Parliament 
 debated the proposal, Gladstone being among those 
 who spoke against it. In the end the government 
 declared itself in favour of concluding an arrange- 
 
 193 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 ment with the company. No other agency had the 
 necessary capital, organization and experience for 
 the undertaking, and the company already possessed 
 the exclusive right of trade in the Indian territory 
 for eleven years longer. It was willing, moreover, 
 to vest the appointment of a governor in the Crown. 
 After protracted negotiations as to terms, the 
 grant was consummated on January 13th, 1849. 
 Vancouver Island, with the royalties of its seas and 
 mines, was handed over to the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany, in perpetuity, subject only to the domination 
 of the Crown, and to a rental of seven shillings pay- 
 able on the first day of each year. The company 
 was to settle a colony of British subjects within five 
 years; to sell the land at a reasonable price, retain- 
 ing only ten per cent, of the proceeds and apply- 
 ing the balance to improvements; to reserve such 
 lands as might be necessary for naval stations 
 and government establishments ; to report every 
 two years with regard to the number of colon- 
 ists settled and the acreage of lands sold ; and 
 to defray the expenses of all civil and military 
 establishments, except during hostilities between 
 Great Britain and a foreign power. The grant, it 
 was stipulated, would be forfeited if no settle- 
 ment were effected within five years. The imperial 
 government reserved the right to recover the is- 
 land, at the expiry of the company’s exclusive 
 license, by payment of the sum actually expended 
 by the company in colonization. 
 
 194 
 
GRANT OF VANCOUVER ISLAND 
 
 The wisdom of the grant was widely questioned. 
 Undoubtedly the desire of the company was 
 to control rather than to promote the settle- 
 ment of the coast. This was shown at once by the 
 prospectus and advertisement which it published 
 on the conclusion of the arrangement. A reason- 
 able price for land, it appeared, was, in the com- 
 pany’s view, one pound per acre. Moreover, for 
 every hundred acres so purchased the buyer 
 was to convey at his own expense three families 
 or six single settlers to the colony. 
 
 Needless to say, these conditions placed a hope- 
 less burden on settlement. It is not to be thought 
 that they were ever intended to do otherwise. 
 Colonization was incompatible with the fur trade. 
 As a business matter, the agreement was very 
 profitable. It continued to the company the use of 
 the country ; and vested rights were created for 
 which, in the end, the traders were well paid. 
 
 Even apart from the above, the methods which 
 were adopted to induce immigration to the new 
 colony were worthy of censure. It would not be 
 fair to say that the company did not want settlers 
 on Vancouver Island: a certain number were needed 
 to preserve the semblance of good faith ; more- 
 over, servants for the Puget Sound Agricultural 
 Company were a necessity. In the representations 
 made, however, to the few who were rich enough 
 to undertake the company’s terms, and to those 
 sent out as employees, an impression was conveyed 
 
 195 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 as to the state of affairs in the colony, which, if 
 not actually contrary to fact, led the people to ex- 
 pect entirely different conditions from those which 
 prevailed. The directors in London, of course, 
 knew little of the life of the colony ; while the 
 officials on the ground had been graduated in a 
 school of hardship which prevented them from 
 appreciating the feelings of men and women trans- 
 planted from the garden of civilization to an un- 
 broken wilderness. The situation of the American 
 settler in Oregon, where land without money and 
 almost without conditions was to be had, did not 
 tend by comparison to increase satisfaction. The 
 California gold fields, too, exercised their lure and 
 did much to retard the settlement of the British 
 colony. 
 
 The first settler on Vancouver Island under the 
 terms of the agreement was W. Colquhoun Grant. 
 Hearing of the project, he had sold his commission 
 in an English cavalry regiment, and with a party 
 of eight persons, fitted out at his own expense, 
 arrived on the island. After careful examination of 
 the country, he chose a location at the head of 
 Sooke Inlet, twenty miles north-west of Victoria. 
 After two years he tired of the life, and leased his 
 farm to the labourers he had brought out. Under 
 their tenure the place fell into neglect, and was sub- 
 sequently sold to the Muir family. Grant’s purpose, 
 according to Finlayson, was to form a purely Scot- 
 tish settlement ; the plan, it was even said, included 
 196 
 
EARLY SETTLERS 
 
 a Gaelic schoolmaster and a Highland piper. James 
 Cooper was a second early arrival who was to figure 
 for a longer time in the history of the colony. Land- 
 ing in 1851, he brought from England a small iron 
 vessel in sections, to be put together at Victoria. 
 He had previously been in the service of the com- 
 pany as commander of a vessel between London and 
 Fort Vancouver, and his object now was to carry on 
 an independent trade, for which his experience had 
 well fitted him. In 1852 he launched a scheme for 
 buying cranberries from the natives of the Fraser 
 River for the San Francisco market, where under 
 the prevailing conditions he could obtain as high as 
 one dollar per gallon for the produce. The Hud- 
 son’s Bay Company, however, had no mind for 
 enterprises of this nature. Cooper had no sooner 
 opened his traffic than Douglas sent instructions 
 to Fort Langley to buy all the cranberries the 
 Indians offered at a price beyond the reach of 
 other traders. Cooper thereupon took up land at 
 Metchosin and farmed three hundred acres for 
 some years in partnership with one Thomas 
 Blenkhorn. 
 
 Other early arrivals were eight coal miners and 
 two labourers on the Harpooner in June 1849 ; 
 eight emigrants on the bark Norman Morrison 
 in 1850; and one hundred and twenty hired labour- 
 ers on the Tory in June 1851. A number of 
 the latter were sent to Fort Rupert to work in 
 the coal mines. 
 
 197 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 By this time, there were, according to contem- 
 porary reports, some seven independent settlers 
 in the vicinity of Victoria, three of whom had pre- 
 viously been in the company’s service. Victoria 
 itself was laid out in streets in 1852, though 
 where the city now stands was still forest with only 
 occasional spaces of cultivated ground. In addi- 
 tion to the fort, only twelve houses stood within 
 the surveyed limits. At the end of 1853, it was esti- 
 mated that, apart from seventeen thousand natives, 
 there was on the island a total population of four 
 hundred and fifty persons of all nationalities, three 
 hundred of whom were divided between Victoria 
 and Sooke, with one hundred and twenty-five at 
 Nanaimo and the rest at Fort Rupert. Up to the 
 same date, nineteen thousand eight hundred and 
 seven acres had been applied for, but of this no 
 less than ten thousand one hundred and seventy- 
 two acres had been claimed by the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company, and two thousand three hundred and 
 seventy-four acres by the Puget Sound Agricul- 
 tural Company. At the beginning of 1854, accord- 
 ing to Bancroft, not more than five hundred acres 
 at the most were under cultivation on the island, 
 and of this all but thirty acres at Sooke and ten 
 acres at Metchosin were under the immediate 
 management of the company. 
 
 From the outset, open quarrels were incessant 
 between the settlers and the company. The first 
 and leading cause lay in the conditions under which 
 198 
 
GRIEVANCES OF THE COLONISTS 
 
 the colonists were placed upon the land, the oner- 
 ous nature of which has been already indicated 
 The land itself, the more so as the company 
 had appropriated the best of it, was not inviting. 
 Fear of the Indians pressed constantly, and there 
 was loud complaint over the lack of properly con- 
 stituted courts of justice. The company’s time- 
 honoured method of barter was hateful and unjust. 
 It was a grievance, too, that the island was not 
 included in the reciprocity treaty between Canada 
 and the United States. Besides these matters, which 
 were of general application, a multitude of indi- 
 vidual woes filled the cup to overflowing. A single 
 example will show the lengths to which the strife 
 proceeded. 
 
 Three miles distant from the fort, Captain Lang- 
 ford, from whom Langford Plains and Langford 
 Lake received their names, worked on the lands 
 of the Puget Sound Company as one of four 
 bailiffs. He had been a Kentish farmer, and for 
 a time an officer of the British army, but he was 
 induced to enlist in the service of the Hudson’s 
 Bay Company, to open, as he supposed, a farm 
 on Vancouver Island. On his arrival he found to 
 his disappointment that he had bound himself to 
 the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, and that 
 the quarters allotted to him consisted of but two 
 log huts, of a single room each — one for himself 
 and his family, the other for his men. Langford was 
 a distant relative of Blanshard, the first governor 
 
 199 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 of the colony, and he was not slow to complain. 
 The colonial office was soon deluged with indict- 
 ments of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its 
 officials, and though the statements of Langford 
 do not appear to have received full credence in 
 England, their matter is of interest as throwing 
 light on the relations in general of the company 
 with the settlers. Langford’s bitterest grievance 
 was that the colonial surveyor had informed him 
 when applying for a certain tract that the land 
 in question was already sold to Dallas, the son- 
 in-law of Douglas. But apparently the land at 
 the time had not been sold, and Langford was 
 therefore mulcted of a prospective profit. He 
 further complained that although he had applied 
 to Douglas for an immediate inquiry into the 
 matter, the erring official had been permitted to 
 leave the colony for England without explanation. 
 In addition, Langford had been hardly used in 
 court in the matter of a libel which had been 
 printed concerning him, and he inveighed against 
 the fitness of David Cameron, a linen draper 
 and brother-in-law to Douglas, who had been ap- 
 pointed the first chief-j ustice of the colony. The 
 report of Douglas as governor on the subject of 
 Langford’s charges had at least the effect of elicit- 
 ing an expression of confidence on the part of the 
 home authorities in the various officials of the 
 colony. That Langford’s onslaught upon Cameron 
 had not the sympathy of the entire community is 
 200 
 
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE 
 
 shown by a document which was presented by a 
 number of the leading proprietors of the island 
 to the governor, in which a protest is entered 
 against the petition requesting the annulment of 
 his appointment. 
 
 Some interesting particulars having an import- 
 ant bearing on the same feature in the history of 
 the island appear in the minutes of evidence taken 
 before a select committee of the British House of 
 Commons which was appointed in 1853 to consider 
 the state of the British possessions in North 
 America then under the administration of the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company. One of the recommenda- 
 tions made by the committee after due deliberation 
 was that the connection of the company with Van- 
 couver Island should be terminated and that pro- 
 vision should be made for the ultimate extension 
 of the colony over the adjoining mainland west 
 of the Rocky Mountains. The report was dated 
 July 31st, 1857, and the recommendations were 
 given effect in the following year, a step consider- 
 ably hastened by the discovery of gold on the 
 Thompson and Fraser Rivers. It was alleged by 
 the committee as the basis of its findings, that the 
 population under the company’s regime had de- 
 creased instead of increasing ; that the price placed 
 upon the land was* much too high ; that the com- 
 pany’s monopoly of the trade of the country 
 had stifled all competition ; that settlers having 
 no money were compelled to barter with the 
 
 201 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 company for goods at exorbitant prices ; that no 
 proper protection was afforded from the Indians, 
 there being only one constable and no military force 
 on the island ; that there was no restriction on the 
 sale of liquors ; that no means were provided for 
 transmitting money to England, or for banking or 
 for the marketing of farm produce ; that the com- 
 pany had done nothing to civilize the Indians, 
 though due credit was given to the humanity of its 
 policy in this connection ; that no survey of lands 
 had been made except of those belonging to the 
 company’s employees; that the company was di- 
 rectly responsible for the slow progress of settle- 
 ment ; that the company evaded the export of 
 goods other than its own in its ships from England ; 
 that settlers had been in specified cases induced to 
 come to Vancouver Island as servants under mis- 
 representations ; and that in general the powerful 
 influence of the Hudson’s Bay Company was in 
 favour throughout of its own interests and opposed 
 to those of free and independent land-holders. 
 Added to this arraignment of social and political 
 conditions in the island, was a mass of useful and 
 interesting information concerning its climatic 
 and natural resources. With regard to its future, 
 the witnesses examined by the committee were 
 with one accord sanguine, provided that a suit- 
 able form of government were granted and a 
 favourable opportunity offered for the process of 
 industrial development. 
 
 202 
 
RICHARD BLANSHARD 
 
 The history of the early years of settlement on 
 Vancouver Island, apart from the above, had few 
 features of interest. The first governor of the 
 colony, Richard Blanshard, was appointed in 1849. 
 It is difficult to discuss his tenure of office seri- 
 ously. An independent governor was not a part 
 of the scheme which the company had in view. 
 The directorate had, in fact, suggested Douglas 
 for the position ; but the nomination was dis- 
 cretely withdrawn on the intimation of the prime 
 minister that at least the first governor of the 
 colony should represent the Crown. Blanshard was 
 accordingly accepted with equanimity by the com- 
 pany, as an instrument which might be used for a 
 time and cast aside. The company, with or with- 
 out the governor, was master of the situation. 
 Blanshard had been educated as a barrister, and 
 had had some previous experience in colonial ad- 
 ministration. He was ambitious, and he accepted 
 the office at its apparent value, undoubtedly without 
 exact knowledge of its nature. Under the terms of 
 the grant of Vancouver Island, the company was 
 required to pay the expenses of all civil and mili- 
 tary establishments during peace. Beyond this, 
 however, Blanshard seems to have had no definite 
 understanding. A thousand acres of land had 
 been promised him by the home government ; the 
 promise, however, was construed by Douglas as 
 applying only to lands for the governor’s tempo- 
 rary use while holding office. On arriving at Vic- 
 
 203 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 toria on March 10th, 1850, Blanshard read the pro- 
 clamation of his appointment to an audience com- 
 posed of the officers of the ships which had brought 
 him and the servants and officials of the company ; 
 but having no quarters allotted to him at the fort 
 he was obliged almost immediately to return on 
 board his vessel. Thereafter, for some time, the seat 
 of government moved with the exigencies of the 
 ship which bore the governor. The island was 
 coasted and Fort Rupert and other points of inter- 
 est visited. At Beaver Harbour, the coal workings, 
 which were then engaging the attention of the 
 company, were inspected, the judgment of Blan- 
 shard being unfavourable as to their success. The 
 condition of the miners and natives having been 
 investigated, the governor returned to Victoria. 
 Without salary, without allowance for expenses, 
 without clerical assistance of any kind, without 
 evidence of the promise of the land he was 
 to receive, without official residence, without the 
 sympathy or cooperation of the officials of the 
 company with whom he was speedily in open 
 antagonism, without even duties to perform beyond 
 the settlement of disputes between the settlers and 
 the company, one course only was open — to resign. 
 Before leaving he nominated a provisional govern- 
 ment of three, consisting of Douglas, Cooper and 
 Tod, and September 1st, 1851, saw his departure 
 from Vancouver Island. The experiment of an in- 
 dependent governor had been tried and had failed. 
 
 204 
 
DOUGLAS APPOINTED GOVERNOR 
 
 A more cruelly treated officer of his rank it would 
 be hard to find in the history of British colonial 
 institutions. 
 
 James Douglas was appointed governor of Van- 
 couver Island in the place of Blanshard. No one 
 outside of the company was available; and there 
 were indeed few interests other than those of the 
 corporation to render outside representation ad- 
 visable. Until population became more numerous 
 and industry more diversified, the machinery of 
 government was, in truth, seldom needed. At most 
 it served but to symbolize the supreme authority 
 of the Crown. Meanwhile, the autocratic rule which 
 Douglas in his capacity of governor and chief factor 
 in one was able to enforce, was on the whole well 
 suited to the conditions. A man more competent 
 it would have been impossible to find. His know- 
 ledge of the country was unrivalled, his control of 
 the officials and servants of the company absolute, 
 and his influence with the Indians, whose good- 
 will was essential, almost unlimited. The situation 
 was anomalous: from many points of view it was 
 indefensible. But the time to end the domina- 
 tion of the company was not yet come, — did not, 
 in fact, arrive till the discovery of gold on the 
 Fraser gave an entirely new aspect to government 
 and affairs in British Columbia. 
 
 205 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 VANCOUVER ISLAND 
 
 F ROM 1851 until 1858 Douglas reigned as 
 governor of Vancouver Island. He did in- 
 deed reign. He continued the council of advisers 
 appointed by Blanshard, the name of Finlay son 
 being added, but his position was none the less 
 that of an almost undisputed sovereign. 
 
 The elements which had proved so discordant 
 under Blanshard were now in harmony. Crown 
 and company were virtually one, both having their 
 centre in the governor. If the union wore an omin- 
 ous look, it had at least been proved that an in- 
 dependent governor was, under existing conditions, 
 impossible. For the moment the monopoly was all 
 triumphant. Colonization came to a standstill. Even 
 the renewal of the grant of the island for a further 
 term of five years was achieved in 1854 with little 
 difficulty, notwithstanding the vigorous protests of 
 the few settlers who still found a voice. 
 
 Yet at the moment of its sturdiest growth the 
 axe was already laid at the root of the tree. Apart 
 from routine, only two incidents call for special 
 mention during this period. The first of these was 
 essentially antagonistic in idea to the supremacy of 
 the company ; and the second involved the imme- 
 diate and utter ruin of the fur trade over a wide 
 
 207 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 area of the mainland. The events referred to were, 
 respectively, the establishment of representative 
 government in the colony, and the discovery of gold 
 on the Fraser River. The present chapter will be 
 divided between these very important developments. 
 
 It was in 1856 that Vancouver Island took on 
 for the first time the full status of a British 
 colony. The commission issued to Blanshard had 
 provided for the summoning of a representative 
 assembly ; but for seven years Douglas with his 
 council alone made shift to provide the scanty 
 legislation which was needed by a community 
 without independent population. Though the Crown 
 had granted him this privilege, it was by the Crown 
 that the first doubts were thrown on its validity. 
 In due course it occurred to the colonial office that 
 the establishment of a legislature on Vancouver 
 Island was necessary, if for no other purpose than 
 to confirm what had already been performed with- 
 out its aid. It was urged, as an additional reason for 
 the step, that in 1859 the relations of the company 
 with the Crown must undergo revision, and that 
 the future administration of the colony would be 
 more easily provided for if the experiment of gov- 
 ernment by a house of representatives had been 
 already made. Douglas was accordingly instructed 
 to arrange forthwith for the dividing of the country 
 into electoral districts, with a view to the election 
 of a legislature, in accordance with the terms of his 
 208 
 
ORGANIZING A LEGISLATURE 
 
 commission. Many practical suggestions as to the 
 procedure to be followed and the nature of the con- 
 stitution that would suit so small a community, 
 were added by Mr. Labouchere, the colonial secre- 
 tary of the day. 
 
 Consternation was apparently the first emotion 
 raised in the breast of the company’s leader by 
 the determination of the home authorities. “ It 
 is not without feelings of dismay,” wrote Douglas 
 in reply, “that I contemplate the nature and 
 amount of labour and responsibility which will 
 be imposed upon me in the process of carrying out 
 the instructions conveyed in your dispatch. Posses- 
 sing a very slender knowledge of legislation, with- 
 out legal advice or intelligent assistance of any kind, 
 I approach the subject with diffidence, feeling, how- 
 ever, all the encouragement which the kindly pro- 
 mised assistance and support of Her Majesty’s 
 government is calculated to inspire.” Making a 
 virtue of necessity, he summoned at once a special 
 meeting of his council to consider the dubious pro- 
 blem that confronted him, the result being that it 
 was resolved to divide the island into four electoral 
 districts, returning seven members in all, the pro- 
 perty qualification of members to be the ownership 
 of freehold estate to the value of three hundred 
 pounds or more, while that of the voters remained 
 as fixed by the governor’s commission — namely, 
 twenty acres or more of freehold land. “ There will 
 be a difficulty in finding properly qualified repre- 
 
 209 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 sentatives,” wrote Douglas to Labouchere on the 
 conclusion of these arrangements, “ and I fear that 
 our early attempts at legislation will make a sorry 
 figure, though at all events they will have the effect 
 you contemplate of removing all doubts as to the 
 validity of our local enactments.” 
 
 The proclamation which gave effect to the above 
 was issued on June 16th, 1856. The four electoral 
 districts into which the colony had been divided 
 were — Victoria, to be represented by three mem- 
 bers ; Esquimalt, to be represented by two ; Nan- 
 aimo, to be represented by one ; and Sooke to be 
 represented by one. Elections duly followed. In 
 Victoria five candidates appeared ; but in the other 
 constituencies, so few or indifferent were the elec- 
 tors, the seats went without a contest. The mem- 
 bers of the first assembly were as follows : — .1. D. 
 Pemberton, Joseph Yates, and E. E. Langford for 
 Victoria ; Thomas Skinner and J. S. Helmcken for 
 Esquimalt: John Muir for Sooke and John E. 
 Kennedy for Nanaimo. 
 
 The House thus chosen had no sooner met than 
 it encountered a difficulty that threatened for a time 
 to be insurmountable. “ J. B. Helmcken has been 
 elected Speaker of the House,” wrote Douglas under 
 date of August 20th, “ but nothing further has been 
 done in consequence of objections having been raised 
 as to the validity of the election in one instance, and 
 as to the property qualifications in two cases, making 
 three out of the seven members against whom peti- 
 210 
 
MEETING OF LEGISLATURE 
 
 tions have been sent in, leaving only three members 
 and the Speaker at liberty to act, and that number 
 is insufficient to form a committee of inquiry. . . . 
 One of the petitions is got up merely for party pur- 
 poses, and if that were withdrawn there would be 
 four members and the Speaker who might proceed 
 to the affairs of the House. In the United States 
 the practice is in such cases for the governor to 
 grant certificates of qualification to a majority of 
 the members, who then proceed to constitute the 
 House, but I am not certain that such a course 
 would be in harmony with the English law. How- 
 ever, if the House would appeal to me on the sub- 
 ject I would have recourse to that expedient.” From 
 a later despatch it appears that the governor was 
 spared such summary action. Langford, the repre- 
 sentative for Victoria, was the member lacking the 
 necessary qualifications, and he was replaced at 
 once by Joseph William Mackay unopposed. 
 
 The legislature met for the first time on August 
 12th, 1856. The inaugural speech of the governor 
 on that occasion is a noteworthy document. Apart 
 from the illustration it offers of what Douglas con- 
 ceived to be the status of the young colony, it 
 throws a strong light on the various problems which 
 beset the early years of the little community. After 
 congratulating the council and House on the occa- 
 sion, “ an event fraught with consequences of the 
 utmost importance to the present and future in- 
 habitants, and remarkable as the first instance of 
 
 211 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 representative institutions being granted in the in- 
 fancy of a British colony,” the address proceeded : 
 
 “ The history and actual position of this colony 
 are marked by many other remarkable circum- 
 stances. Called into existence by an Act of the su- 
 preme government, immediately after the discovery 
 of gold in California, it has maintained an arduous 
 and incessant struggle with the disorganizing effects 
 on labour of that discovery. Remote from every other 
 British settlement, with its commerce trammelled, 
 and met by restrictive duties on every side, its trade 
 and resources remain undeveloped. Self-supporting, 
 and defraying all the expenses of its own govern- 
 ment, it presents a striking contrast to every other 
 colony in the British Empire, and like the native 
 pines of its storm-beaten promontories, it has ac- 
 quired a slow but hardy growth. Its future progress 
 must, under Providence, in a great measure depend 
 on the intelligence, industry and enterprise of its 
 inhabitants, and upon the legislative wisdom of this 
 assembly.” 
 
 The address paused at this point to refer to the 
 aid and support which the executive power might 
 in the future expect to derive from the “ local ex- 
 perience and knowledge of the wishes of the people 
 and the wants of the country,” which the members 
 possessed. It then resumed : 
 
 “ Gentlemen, I am happy to inform you that Her 
 Majesty’s government continues to express the most 
 lively interest in the progress and welfare of this 
 212 
 
FISCAL PROBLEMS 
 
 colony. Negotiations are now pending with the 
 government of the United States, which may pro- 
 bably terminate in an extension of the reciprocity 
 treaty to Vancouver Island. To show the com- 
 mercial advantages connected with that treaty I 
 will just mention that an import duty of £30 is 
 levied on every £100 worth of British produce 
 which is now sent to San Francisco, or to any other 
 American port ; or, in other words, the British pro- 
 prietor pays as a tax to the United States nearly 
 the value of every third cargo of fish, timber, or 
 coal which he sends to any American port. The 
 reciprocity treaty utterly abolishes those fearful im- 
 posts, and establishes a system of free trade in the 
 produce of British colonies. The effects of that 
 measure in developing the trade and natural re- 
 sources of the colony can, therefore, be hardly over- 
 estimated. The coal, the timber, and the productive 
 fisheries of Vancouver’s Island will assume a value 
 before unknown ; while every branch of trade will 
 start into activity, and become the means of pour- 
 ing wealth into the country. So unbounded is the 
 reliance which I place in the enterprise and intelli- 
 gence possessed by the people of this colony, and 
 in the colony, and in the advantages of their geo- 
 graphical position, that with equal rights and a fair 
 field I think they may enter into a successful com- 
 petition with the people of any other country. The 
 extension of the reciprocity treaty to this island 
 once gained, the interests will become inseparably 
 
 213 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 connected with the principles of free trade, a system 
 which I think it will be sound policy on our part to 
 encourage. 
 
 “ Gentlemen, the colony has been again visited 
 this year by a large party of northern Indians, and 
 their presence has excited in our minds a not un- 
 reasonable degree of alarm. Through the blessing of 
 God they have kept from committing acts of open 
 violence, and been quiet and orderly in their de- 
 portment ; yet the presence of large bodies of armed 
 savages, who have never felt the restraining in- 
 fluences of moral and religious training, and who 
 are accustomed to follow the impulses of their own 
 evil natures more than the dictation of reason or 
 justice, gives rise to a feeling of insecurity which 
 must exist as long as the colony remains without 
 military protection. Her Majesty’s government, 
 ever alive to the dangers which beset the colony, 
 have arranged with the lords commissioners of the 
 Admiralty, that the President frigate should be sent 
 to Vancouver’s Island ; and the measure will, I have 
 no doubt, be carried into effect without delay. I 
 shall nevertheless continue to conciliate the good- 
 will of the native Indian tribes by treating them 
 with justice and forbearance, and by rigidly pro- 
 tecting their civil and agrarian rights. Many cogent 
 reasons of humanity and sound policy recommend 
 that course to our attention ; and I shall, therefore, 
 rely upon your support in carrying such measures 
 into effect. We know, from our own experience, 
 214 
 
FINANCE 
 
 that the friendship of the natives is at all times use- 
 ful, while it is no less certain that their enmity may 
 become more disastrous than any other calamity to 
 which the colony is directly exposed. 
 
 “Gentlemen of the House of Assembly, according 
 to the constitutional usage, with you must originate 
 all money bills ; it is therefore your special province 
 to consider the ways and means of defraying the 
 ordinary expenses of the government, either by 
 levying a customs duty on imports, or by a system 
 of direct taxation. The poverty of the country and 
 the limited means of a population struggling against 
 the pressure of numberless privations, must neces- 
 sarily restrict the amount of taxation ; it should, 
 therefore, be our constant study to regulate the 
 public expenditure according to the means of the 
 country, and to live strictly within our income. The 
 common error of running into speculative improve- 
 ments entailing debts upon the colony, for a very 
 uncertain advantage, should be carefully avoided. 
 The demands upon the public revenue will, at pre- 
 sent, chiefly arise from the improvement of the in- 
 ternal communications of the country, and provid- 
 ing for the education of the young, the erection 
 of places for public worship, the defence of the 
 country, and the administration of justice. 
 
 “ Gentlemen, I feel in all its force the responsi- 
 bility now resting upon us. The interests and well 
 being of thousands yet unborn may be affected by 
 our decisions, and they will reverence or condemn 
 
 215 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 our acts according as they are found to influence, 
 for good or for evil, the events of the future.” 
 
 With this exordium, the legislature proceeded to 
 its duties. The opening session was almost wholly 
 devoted to the consideration of ways and means. It 
 would appear on the whole to have been no small 
 problem to make ends meet in the young colony. 
 In 1855, for example, the total public expenditures 
 reached the sum of £4,107 2s. 3d., of which £1,388 
 5s. 5d. were spent on roads and bridges ; £683 18s. 
 Id. on surveys; £1,362 17s. 5d. on the church, 
 chaplain and parsonage at Victoria ; £100 on the 
 administration of justice ; £81 8s. 9d. on militia ; 
 £30 9s. 2d. on jail expenses ; and £7 15s. lOd. on 
 government premises. To meet this, an income of 
 £334 17s. was derived from land sales, and the sum 
 of £340 from the sale of licenses to deal in liquor, 
 these being the sole local sources of revenue. The 
 sum of £130 was voted to meet the expenses of the 
 first House. This modest appropriation, it is of in- 
 terest to note in the records, permitted the payment 
 of £10 to the clerk of the House; £5 to the ser- 
 geant-at-arms ; £20 for lighting, heating and furn- 
 ishing ; £50 for the copying of documents ; £5 for 
 stationery ; while the remaining £40 were prudently 
 withheld for current salaries. 
 
 Apart from this incursion into finance, little of an 
 original nature was attempted by the assembly. Of 
 its acts of ratification, the most important was that 
 by which the rules of the Supreme Court, as previ- 
 216 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE COMPANY 
 
 ously in force for the administration of justice in 
 civil cases, were continued without alteration. This 
 done, the House lapsed into inactivity. In reality 
 there was nothing for it to do. It introduced no new 
 element into the government of the colony. It was 
 not even representative of anything but the all 
 pervading interests of the company. Douglas, the 
 governor, was the company’s factor-in-chief. Work, 
 Finlayson and Tod, who made up the council, were 
 respectively chief factor, chief trader and ancient 
 pensioner of the company. The seven members of 
 the House were no less of the monopoly. Helmcken, 
 the Speaker, was the company’s staff doctor; Pem- 
 berton was its surveyor-general ; and Mackay was 
 its clerk. Muir and Kennedy were retired servants. 
 Y ates was its beneficiary ; and Skinner was an agent 
 of the Puget Sound Company. Cameron, the chief- 
 justice, was the brother-in-law of Douglas ; Ander- 
 son, the collector of duties, was a retired chief- 
 trader. For the real history of the island, therefore, 
 during the period of representative institutions as 
 before, it is from the archives of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company that enquiry must be made. The acts of 
 Douglas as governor and his official despatches to 
 the colonial office are well known; of Douglas as 
 chief factor and the communications which he held 
 with the London directorate — the hidden springs to 
 which the outside show responded — we have but 
 occasional glimpses or such stray particles of fact as 
 may be gleaned by inference or from alien sources. 
 
 217 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Thus, without incident or variation, the govern- 
 ment of Vancouver Island continued until 1859, 
 when the end came of the second five years’ term of 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company’s rule. In truth, the 
 administration of the colony, as apart from the 
 company, had proved a matter of small difficulty. 
 There was but one constable. As no means were 
 provided for paying a recorder or other administra- 
 tor of justice, the governor himself had acted in 
 that capacity. In the place of sheriffs and a militia, 
 a body of mounted police termed “ voltigeurs ” was 
 organized from among the settlers and servants of 
 the company. On only two occasions was a display 
 of force found necessary. In December 1852, a 
 shepherd at Christmas Hill was killed by two 
 natives, one of whom fled to Cowichan and the 
 other to Nanaimo. To allay the settlers’ alarm, 
 Douglas with a contingent borrowed from H.M.S. 
 Thetis , then lying at Esquimalt, proceeded to the 
 Saanich village, where after a characteristic parley 
 the murderer was handed over. The expedition 
 then passed to Nanaimo and secured the second 
 culprit. At both places the natives were sternly ad- 
 monished. On the return to Victoria the criminals 
 were tried and executed. Some time later a white 
 man was shot by an Indian at Cowichan, but the 
 offender was again delivered up, after a demonstra- 
 tion as before, and was hanged in the presence of 
 his people. Thus was the Indian taught to respect 
 the white man’s law. 
 
 218 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD 
 
 The disruption of this curious fabric was in the 
 end as sudden as it was complete. No other agency, 
 it may be safely said, than that which brought the 
 result to pass, could have achieved it with the same 
 unexpectedness and finality. That agency was the 
 discovery of placer gold. The incident belongs to 
 more than local history, the opening of the gold 
 fields of British Columbia being amori^ the most 
 notable of those dazzling events which have flutter- 
 ed from time to time the financial capitals of the 
 world and opened new paths for the adventurous to 
 sudden and marvellous wealth. 
 
 As early as the regime of Blanshard, rumours of 
 the finding of gold had reached Victoria from the 
 Queen Charlotte Islands. More in alarm than grati- 
 fication at the news, a brigantine had been des- 
 patched by the company to investigate. It dis- 
 covered quartz but no placers. In the following 
 year, however, expeditions from various quarters 
 landed on the islands ; and on January 14th, 1852, 
 Douglas was able to report the definite discovery of 
 gold on the western coast. It appeared strongly 
 advisable to the governor at this juncture to pro- 
 hibit foreigners from landing on the new gold fields. 
 Several vessels, he pointed out to the colonial secre- 
 tary, had sailed from the United States, and more 
 were being outfitted on the California sea-board, 
 the crews being prepared to overcome opposition by 
 their numbers and the ease with which reinforce- 
 ments of adventurers might be obtained from San 
 
 219 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Francisco. Attention was also called to the hostile 
 attitude of the Indians. The Admiralty in reply 
 ordered H.M.S. Thetis to assert Her Majesty’s 
 sovereignty over the islands; but it was decided not 
 to prohibit the vessels of foreign countries from 
 landing men and stores there. In May of the same 
 year, Douglas accordingly thought it advisable to 
 report more fully on the matter. Seven American 
 ships, he informed Earl Grey, with between forty 
 and seventy men each, had arrived in Gold Har- 
 bour, four having returned after landing fifteen men 
 and erecting a blockhouse. “ It is very certain,” he 
 added, “ that success will have the effect of attract- 
 ing crowds of adventurers from the American 
 settlements to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and it 
 will be no easy task to eject them when firmly 
 established.” The admission of foreigners to the 
 gold fields of British Columbia was from first to 
 last, as will be seen, the cause of much disquietude 
 to the governor. 
 
 These and other representations bore fruit at the 
 close of the year, when Douglas received a com- 
 mission as lieutenant-governor of the Queen Char- 
 lotte Islands — “to meet the circumstances of the 
 time.” Power was by the same instrument granted 
 him to issue licenses, on the express understanding 
 that they did not give a title in the soil. He was 
 requested also to forward the names of persons who 
 might act as justices of the peace. Enclosed with 
 the despatch which bore these orders were copies of 
 220 
 
THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS 
 
 letters which had been issued instructing the Ad- 
 miralty to protect British property and interests 
 from foreign violation and calling the attention of 
 the United States government to the actions of its 
 citizens on the Pacific. Douglas, on their receipt, at 
 once drew up a proclamation with regard to the 
 taking out of licenses, the conditions which he at- 
 tached to the latter being similar to those enforced 
 in New South Wales, the most important difference 
 lying in the fact that the fee in the Queen Charlotte 
 Islands was placed at ten instead of twenty 
 shillings. 
 
 In the excitement which followed these develop- 
 ments, a number of expeditions made haste to the 
 islands. Five vessels were reported in Mitchell 
 Harbour at one time ; and the hills were full of pro- 
 spectors. The end, however, was disappointment. 
 One quartz vein, seven inches in width and trace- 
 able for eight feet, contained in places twenty-five 
 per cent, of gold ; but the hope of loading vessels 
 with the treasure was soon abandoned. From a 
 pocket on Gold Harbour, Moresby Island, between 
 $20,000 and $25,000 were taken (or were reported 
 to have been taken) but more was probably spent 
 in the mining of it than was finally recovered. About 
 the same time Indians from the Skeena River 
 brought in nuggets to the company’s fort, but the 
 several expeditions that were sent out to locate the 
 sources met with failure. The whole movement died 
 almost as suddenly as it began. 
 
 221 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 The flurry with regard to the Queen Charlotte 
 Islands serves but as introductory episode in the 
 history proper of the gold fields of British Columbia. 
 These, as is well known to fame, lay on the main- 
 land, in the beds of the Fraser and Thompson 
 Rivers, from whose golden sands millions of dollars 
 worth of the precious metal was washed annually for 
 many succeeding years. Exactly how, when, or 
 where the finds were first made is uncertain, amid 
 the mass of legend offering on the subject. Gold 
 dust, according to one report, had been seen by the 
 company in the possession of the natives at Kam- 
 loops as early asl852, though no suspicion was awak- 
 ened at the time as to the wealth of the neighbour- 
 hood. Gold, according to a letter of Douglas written 
 in 1860, was first discovered on the Thompson 
 River by an Indian a short distance below Nicom- 
 men. Quaffing from the stream, he saw a shining 
 pebble: it proved to be gold. Finlayson mentions 
 the discoveries of McLean, the officer in charge at 
 Kamloops, as among the earliest incidents of the 
 gold-mining epoch. According to Anderson, the 
 first intimation that the company received of the 
 existence of gold in the interior was in 1855, when 
 some particles of the metal were found by a 
 servant of the company who was idly washing a 
 pannikin of gravel near Fort Colville. The result 
 was the opening of diggings close by, which proved 
 only moderately remunerative. Later, in a version 
 of the story which accounts for the spread of the 
 222 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES 
 
 news, some Canadians went over from Colville to 
 the Thompson and Fraser, found gold everywhere, 
 were followed by others, who in turn sent the 
 reports over Puget Sound to San Francisco. In 
 less than a year after, twenty thousand miners were 
 on their way to the Fraser. 
 
 The first official mention of the discoveries was 
 made by Douglas to the home government in a 
 despatch dated April 16th, 1856. This had reference 
 to the finds on the Upper Columbia. That they were 
 not seriously regarded is shown by the fact that 
 the subject was permitted to rest until July 1857. 
 In the latter year, it appears, the Indians had ex- 
 pelled some parties of gold-seekers from this region, 
 partly from a desire to retain the gold, and partly 
 because they feared that the operations of the gold- 
 diggers would prevent the salmon from ascending 
 the river. Later in the same year, however, Douglas 
 in a letter to Labouchere speaks of the Couteau 
 mines, so named from the natives of the Thompson 
 and Shushwap countries, as attracting attention, 
 though up to October 6th, 1857, only three hund- 
 red ounces of gold had been exported through the 
 agency of the company. Nevertheless, on the same 
 date as his letter, Douglas issued a proclamation de- 
 claring all gold in its natural place of deposit to be- 
 long to the Crown and that persons might not ‘‘dig 
 or disturb the soil in search of gold until authorized 
 in that behalf by Her Majesty’s colonial govern- 
 ment.” The authorization in question was to be ob- 
 
 223 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 tained by payment of a license of 10s. a month, 
 Douglas excusing his action in the matter by the 
 fact that he was invested with command over the 
 district by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and that 
 he was the only representative of the Crown within 
 reach. The cost of these licenses was raised to 21s. 
 before the end of the following January. 
 
 The immediate result of the policy of causing the 
 miners to pay tribute in this manner was to bring 
 them one and all to Victoria as the starting-point 
 for the new diggings. Coming as they did from 
 California by sea, Victoria was naturally the first 
 point of call ; had no license been required, how- 
 ever, they might have gone through direct to the 
 Fraser. Though the effect upon a number was mere- 
 ly to cause a break in the journey, upon others, ow- 
 ing to transportation difficulties, a longer stay was 
 necessitated. During the spring and summer months 
 of 1858, the rush was extraordinary. Ocean steamers 
 crowded with gold-seekers arrived almost daily. 
 From a hamlet clustered about a Hudson’s Bay 
 trading-post, Victoria sprang suddenly into a city. 
 No accurate record of arrivals was kept ; but it has 
 been estimated that between twenty thousand and 
 twenty- five thousand persons passed through its 
 portals. Every trade, nationality and condition was 
 represented in that throng. From the Oregon coast 
 to San Francisco, men dropped the instruments of 
 their calling, hastily sold what could most readily 
 be converted into cash, left homes uncared for, and 
 224 
 
THE RUSH TO THE FRASER 
 
 boarded the first nondescript carrier whose prow 
 turned northward. Some who avoided the passage 
 by sea followed the coast by land, or attempted to 
 reach the goal through the mountain passes of the 
 interior. The gambler and the parasite followed in 
 their wake. California’s population was seriously de- 
 pleted ; San Francisco was threatened with bank- 
 ruptcy. In Victoria the sound of the hammer was 
 incessant day and night. Buildings to the number 
 of two hundred and upward arose in six weeks. The 
 land office was besieged before daylight. There was 
 all but a food famine. Flour rose to $30.00 a barrel; 
 ship biscuit was not to be had; lumber brought 
 $100 a thousand feet ; town lots sold at $1,000 per 
 foot frontage. Victoria became immediately the 
 most important shipping centre of the coast, and its 
 docks were crowded with merchandise. Of the 
 promiscuous population that continued to pour in, 
 many remained in the city. Those in search of gold 
 pressed on to the Fraser, — in canoes, in improvised 
 sailing boats or in steamers, daunted by no dangers 
 and enduring the severest hardships. Many were 
 lost in the tide-rips, and of those that reached the 
 great river thousands were doomed to disappoint- 
 ment. The Fraser begins to rise in June, and does 
 not reach its ebb until the autumn. High water 
 covers the bars and renders placer mining im- 
 possible. Some of the more indomitable pushed on 
 at the risk of life to Hope and Yale, the head of 
 navigation. The great majority, however, ‘turned 
 
 225 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 their backs on British Columbia and repaired again 
 to San Francisco. Those who remained met with 
 their reward. When the Fraser fell, the harvest 
 was rich. Some $543,000 in gold was shipped out in 
 that year alone, and it is estimated that the total 
 output was from $150,000 to $200,000 greater than 
 that amount. 
 
 The invasion of this wild and lawless multitude 
 presented a serious problem to Douglas, badly 
 equipped as he was for maintaining order and en- 
 forcing the authority of his government. On May 
 8th, 1858, he gives voice again in a despatch 
 to the fear which had so beset him at the time 
 of the gold discoveries on the Queen Charlotte 
 Islands — the fear of the foreigner who knew not 
 the company. He admits the openings for trade 
 presented by the inrush, as well as the practical 
 impossibility of stemming so fierce a tide ; yet he 
 cannot refrain, notwithstanding the peremptory 
 mandate of Lytton that it was no part of British 
 policy to exclude foreigners from the gold fields, 
 from casting about for means of regulation and 
 profit other than those that went hand in hand with 
 a policy of unrestriction. One plan which he ven- 
 tured to suggest as asserting the interest of the 
 Crown at the same time that it assured a revenue 
 to the company, involved an arrangement with the 
 United States Pacific Mail Company whereby the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company would enjoy a monopoly 
 of the trade on the Fraser River and receive a com- 
 226 
 
VISIT TO THE MINES 
 
 pensation of two dollars per capita for each passen- 
 ger carried to the head of navigation, the steamers 
 to accept no passengers but those who had paid for 
 licenses from the government of Vancouver Island. 
 The arrangement was to continue for one year. 
 Lord Lytton, however, promptly disapproved of 
 the conditions as too favourable to the company, 
 and as a matter of fact, the arrangement was never 
 more than a project within the mind. 
 
 Shortly after the beginning of the influx Douglas 
 made a trip in person to the mainland, ascending 
 the Fraser to Forts Langley, Hope and Yale. 
 At Langley a number of speculators had taken 
 possession of the land and were staking lots for 
 sale ; unlicensed and contraband trading had also 
 sprung up. These matters were speedily righted. At 
 Fort Hope, the miners, prior to his arrival, had 
 organized a form of government and had posted 
 regulations. These were replaced by rules pro- 
 claimed in the name of the governor of Vancouver 
 Island. 
 
 An incident is related of this trip which brings 
 into prominence the practical wisdom of the gover- 
 nor. Landing at Hill’s Bar, he inquired concerning 
 the presence of a British subject, with a view to 
 the appointment of a justice of the peace. The one 
 man indicated to him confessed to a lack of know- 
 ledge of the law, and recommended a versatile and 
 well-known foreigner to the governor’s attention. 
 Impressed by the man’s candour, Douglas declared 
 
 227 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 that if he knew the difference between right and 
 wrong his qualifications were sufficient, and he was 
 forthwith appointed to administer the law. 
 
 In June, Douglas in a despatch to Lord Stanley 
 gave a detailed account of this journey. “ Evidence 
 is obtained,” he wrote, “of the existence of gold 
 over a vast extent of country situated both north 
 and south of the Fraser River, and the conviction 
 is gradually forcing itself on my mind that not only 
 the Fraser River and its tributary streams, but the 
 whole country situated to the eastward of the Gulf 
 of Georgia, as far north as Johnstone’s Straits, is one 
 continued bed of gold, of incalculable value and 
 extent.” In view of this, he proposed that the land 
 be thrown open for settlement, and that it be sur- 
 veyed and sold at a rate not to exceed 20s. an acre. 
 He pointed out, at the same time, that compen- 
 sation would have to be made to the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company for giving up their rights of exclusive 
 trade. 
 
 It was in reply to this communication that 
 Douglas received intelligence of a decision on the 
 part of the home government fraught with im- 
 portant consequences to himself and the country. 
 Mention has been made before of the proceedings 
 of that select committee of inquiry which placed so 
 unfavourable a report regarding the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company before the British parliament of 1858. In 
 Canada a similar investigation had been made with 
 a like result. This and the discovery of gold on the 
 228 
 
THE MAINLAND COLONY 
 
 Fraser River had convinced the government of the 
 need of radical change, west as well as east of the 
 Rockies. On August 2nd, 1858, accordingly, an Act 
 was passed providing for the government of the 
 mainland of British America, from the 49th parallel 
 northward to the Naas and the Finlay, and from 
 the crest of the Rocky Mountains westward to the 
 sea, including the Queen Charlotte and adjacent 
 islands with the exception of Vancouver Island. 
 One month later, the license of exclusive trade 
 granted to the Hudsons Bay Company for twenty- 
 one years from 1838, in so far as it covered the 
 territory above defined, was revoked, the govern- 
 ment re-purchasing the company’s rights on Van- 
 couver Island for £57,500. Of British Columbia (for 
 by that name it was decided that the new colony 
 on the mainland should be known) it was proposed 
 that Douglas should be governor, the office to be 
 held in conjunction with his present post in Van- 
 couver Island. The condition was added that he 
 should sever all connection with the Hudson’s Bay 
 and Puget Sound Companies. The additional salary 
 offered was at first £1,000. Douglas expressed ap- 
 preciation of the honour and accepted the con- 
 ditions. “With the consent of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company,” he wrote, “ I place my humble services 
 unhesitatingly at the disposal of Her Majesty’s 
 government, and I will take early measures for 
 withdrawing from the company and disposing of 
 my Puget Sound stock, trusting that the allowance 
 
 229 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 as to salary from Her Majesty’s government will 
 be adequate to my support in a manner worthy of 
 the position I am called upon to fill.” The allow- 
 ance, in Douglas’s opinion, ought to have been 
 £ 5 , 000 , his fortune having been impaired by his al- 
 most unrequited tenure of office in Vancouver 
 Island. The colonial secretary, however, did not 
 feel justified in assigning a larger sum than £ 1,800 
 at the time, though it was intimated that an 
 increase derived from local funds would not be op- 
 posed if the revenue should warrant it. 
 
 Thus ended the long connection of the famous 
 chief factor and the company. Thus also died the 
 exclusive rights of the great monopoly in the 
 territory west of the Rocky Mountains. Douglas 
 belongs henceforth to the public life of the country, 
 and to that alone ; while the company takes its 
 place in the ranks of private trading enterprises, 
 still powerful, and with a unique part still to play 
 in the upbuilding of the country, but on no other 
 basis than that of equal privilege. 
 
 230 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE TWO COLONIES 
 
 I N an extended series of despatches addressed to 
 Douglas, bearing date July and August 1858, 
 Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the colonial secretary, 
 set forth, amid a wealth of comment, the principles 
 by which, under the watchful tutelage of the home 
 government, the early steps of the province of 
 British Columbia were to be guided. These formed 
 at once the constitution and the Magna Charta of 
 the new community. They occupy from many 
 points of view a remarkable place in the history of 
 the colonial institutions of Great Britain. 
 
 The main feature of the plan was that it placed 
 the entire functions both of government and legis- 
 lation in the hands of Douglas. A check was 
 indeed provided in the form of a council, which 
 the governor was recommended to select as soon as 
 possible, and to which foreigners as well as British 
 subjects might be eligible. It was also declared with 
 emphasis that the colony was expected to adopt 
 representative institutions at the earliest moment 
 practicable. But the effect of these provisions was 
 less real than apparent. The council was purely ad- 
 visory ; and the remoteness of the time when the 
 chaotic population of the mainland might be 
 capable of political organization served but to 
 
 231 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 emphasize the extraordinary powers that were en- 
 trusted meanwhile to the governor. 
 
 Ways and means were perhaps the second matter 
 to receive attention. It was thought that the ex- 
 ceptional resources of the country, including as they 
 did not only fertile lands (the leading element of 
 success, as Great Britain held, in all colonial settle- 
 ments), a magnificent system of harbours and 
 waterways, and that wealth in precious mineral 
 which was even now attracting immigrants on so 
 unprecedented a scale, would soon provide a 
 revenue. Moderate duties on beer, wine, spirits, and 
 the other articles usually subject to such taxation, 
 as well as the sale of lands, — especially town lots 
 for which high prices might be demanded, — were 
 regarded at the outset as preferable to any system 
 of mining licenses. The latter, however, were not 
 forbidden, the colonial secretary contenting him- 
 self with a reference to the experience of Australia, 
 which had not been happy in this method of apply- 
 ing the principles of direct taxation. 
 
 Other provisions were of a miscellaneous character. 
 The establishment of a seaport town and of a seat of 
 government were suggested. It was promised that 
 a party of Royal Engineers would be sent from 
 England to survey lands for settlement (the disposal 
 of which should be by gradual process), to open 
 roads and to choose sites for the cities above men- 
 tioned. An experienced officer was to be furnished 
 to assist in the formation of an adequate police 
 232 
 
STATUS OF HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY 
 
 force. A collector of customs and a j udge were also 
 promised. Arrangements for the transmission of 
 mails via Panama and the levying of postage were 
 authorized. In general, it was provided that the 
 country in various directions should be developed, 
 as soon as full reports concerning its resources could 
 be prepared by the governor or his assistants. Every 
 care was enjoined upon the governor not to 
 antagonize or irritate the mixed population now 
 swarming into the country. Especially was there 
 to be no jealousy of or discrimination against 
 foreigners, who were to be convinced in every 
 legitimate way that their interests would be pro- 
 tected by the government. Kindness towards the 
 Indians was commanded. Other instructions had re- 
 ference to the discouragement of speculation, the 
 granting of naturalization, and the making of ap- 
 pointments with a view both to efficiency and the 
 satisfaction of local feeling. 
 
 The bearing of the new arrangement upon the 
 status of the Hudson’s Bay Company, hitherto sole 
 overlord of the whole vast region, had been suffici- 
 ently indicated by the measure which revoked the 
 special privileges granted in 1838, 1849, and 1854. 
 Nevertheless it was thought advisable, in view of 
 the recent past, to remind the governor with some 
 particularity that at no time had these privileges 
 gone further than to guarantee exclusive trade with 
 the Indians of the Fraser River. Even before the 
 establishment of the colony, the company, it was 
 
 233 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 pointed out, had no right to exclude strangers ; it 
 had no rights of government or of occupation of the 
 soil ; it had no right to prevent or interfere with any 
 kind of trading, except with the Indians alone. The 
 British government, however, went even further in 
 its watchfulness than this explicit definition. “ You 
 will pardon me if I enjoin on you as imperative,” 
 wrote the colonial secretary to Douglas, “ the 
 most diligent care that in the sales of land there 
 should not be the slightest cause to impute a desire 
 to show favour to the servants of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company. Parliament will watch with jealousy 
 every proceeding connected with such sales ; and I 
 shall rely upon you to take every precaution which 
 not only impartial probity but deliberate prudence 
 can suggest, that there shall be no handle given for 
 a charge, I will not say of favour, but of indiffer- 
 ence or apathy to the various kinds of land-jobbing, 
 either to benefit favoured individuals or to cheat 
 the land revenue, which are of so frequent occur- 
 rence at the outset of colonization, and which it is 
 the duty of Her Majesty’s government, so far as 
 lies in them, to repress.” 
 
 The man upon whom the weight of these im- 
 portant and manifold counsels was laid had at 
 least the entire confidence of the home govern- 
 ment. “ I cannot conclude,” wrote the colonial 
 secretary at the close of one of his despatches, 
 “ without a cordial expression of my sympathy in 
 the difficulties you have encountered and of my 
 234 
 
POWERS OF DOUGLAS 
 
 sense of the ability, the readiness of resource, the 
 wise and manly temper of conciliation which you 
 have so signally displayed ; and I doubt not that 
 you will continue to show the same vigour and dis- 
 cretion in its exercise; and you may rely with 
 confidence upon whatever support and aid Her 
 Majesty’s government can afford you.” And again 
 with more particular reference to the future and 
 to the responsibilities entrusted to him in this ex- 
 traordinary manner: “These powers are indeed of 
 very serious and unusual extent, but Her Majesty’s 
 government fully rely on your moderation and dis- 
 cretion. You are aware that they have only been 
 granted on account of the very unusual circum- 
 stances which have called into being the colony 
 committed to your charge, and which may for 
 some time continue to characterize it. To use them, 
 except for the most necessary purpose, would be, in 
 truth, to abuse them greatly. They are required 
 for the maintenance of British law and British 
 habits of order, and for regulating the special 
 questions to which the conditions of employment 
 and of the population may give birth.” 
 
 To attempt, within ordinary limits, to describe 
 the somewhat elastic manner in which application 
 was made of the comprehensive scheme outlined 
 above, is to be plunged at once into a mass of in- 
 cident, each phase of which has both its own and 
 its reflected importance, but the heterogeneous 
 
 235 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 nature of which renders the topical method difficult. 
 The government of which Douglas formed the em- 
 bodiment was in effect a means by which difficulties 
 might be met by competent authority as they arose. 
 It was not expected to attain at once to system, 
 where even precedent had to be created. For this 
 reason it will be well to follow somewhat closely 
 for a time the movements of the governor himself as 
 he proceeded to the execution of his difficult task. 
 But first a word is needed as to the men and the 
 material which were placed at his disposal, and the 
 general nature of the problem involved in the first 
 attempt at government in British Columbia. 
 
 To the command of the Royal Engineers, the 
 promise of which had been the most stirring note 
 of cheer in the despatches of the home govern- 
 ment and a detachment of which was on its way 
 to British Columbia within a few weeks, Colonel 
 Richard Clement Moody had been appointed. He 
 bore, in addition, the title of chief commissioner 
 of lands and works, with a latent commission as lieu- 
 tenant-governor of the colony, in case of the inca- 
 pacity or absence of Douglas. That there might be 
 no misunderstanding as to the nature of his office and 
 its relation to that of the governor, his instructions 
 were to an unusual degree explicit. The governor, 
 it was explained, was the supreme authority in 
 the colony and his orders were to prevail as to the 
 spots at which all surveys and other public works 
 should be carried out. At the same time the duties 
 236 
 
THE ROYAL ENGINEERS 
 
 of the commissioner were to be regarded as special 
 and not to be interfered with except under circum- 
 stances of the greatest gravity. The raising of a 
 revenue from land sales being of immediate import- 
 ance, the commissioner was urged to afford the 
 governor, without shackling the latter’s discretion, 
 the benefit of his talents and experience in ensuring 
 this paramount object. Full reports were to be made 
 from time to time of the various resources of the 
 colony — its mines, its fisheries, the qualities of its 
 coal, the nature of its soil, and its maritime ap- 
 proaches — with a view to the immediate develop- 
 ment of the social and industrial welfare of the com- 
 munity. With regard to the military employment of 
 his force, the utmost discretion was to be used. “No 
 soldiers,” wrote the colonial secretary to Moody, 
 “are likely to be more popular then the Royal 
 Engineers, partly, let me hope, from their military 
 discipline and good conduct, and partly from the 
 civil nature of their duties in clearing the headway 
 for civilization. Thus, if not ostentatiously setting 
 forth its purely military character, the force at your 
 command will, nevertheless, when the occasion may 
 need its demonstration, do its duty as soldiers no 
 
 less than as surveyors Wherever England 
 
 extends her sceptre, there as against the foreign 
 enemy she pledges the defence of her sword. It 
 seems meanwhile ” he continued, “ a good augury 
 of the cooperation of the colonists in any measure 
 demanding public spirit, that the miners themselves 
 
 237 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 are constructing a road, of which seven miles are 
 completed, and that they have organized themselves 
 into bands under leaders, thus recognizing discipline 
 as the element of success in all combined under- 
 takings. Each miner thus employed deposits with 
 the governor $25 as security for good conduct. I 
 need not add that a governor who could at once in- 
 spire confidence and animate exertion must have 
 many high qualities which will ensure your esteem 
 and add to the satisfaction with which you will co- 
 operate with his efforts.” 
 
 The first contingent of the force, consisting of 
 twenty non-commissioned officers and men, left 
 England by the steamer La Plata on September 
 2nd, arriving at Victoria in November. A second 
 followed soon. In a third party, which sailed by the 
 clipper-ship Thames City around the Horn, were in- 
 cluded three officers, a staff assistant surgeon, one 
 hundred and eighteen non-commissioned officers and 
 men, together with thirty-one women and thirty- 
 four children, the whole in charge of Captain R. H. 
 Luard. Moody arrived in December. The La Plata 
 among its despatches to Douglas bore three of 
 special importance: the first including his commis- 
 sion as governor of British Columbia; a second em- 
 powering him to make provision for the administra- 
 tion of justice; and a third informing him of the 
 revocation of the charter to the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company of 1838 with reference to territory on 
 the mainland west of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 238 
 
MATTHEW BA1LLIE BEGBIE 
 
 Another appointment of the time, fraught with 
 even greater importance to the colony, was that 
 of Matthew Baillie Begbie as judge of British 
 Columbia. He arrived in November 1858. Though 
 the office, strictly speaking, was judicial, he was in- 
 structed for the present to lend his assistance in the 
 framing of laws and other legal business more pro- 
 perly pertaining to the functions of an attorney- 
 general, the first incumbent of that office, Mr. G. 
 H. Carey, not being appointed until some time 
 later. Until his death in 1894, Begbie continued 
 from sheer force of character as well as of intellect 
 to fill a unique and commanding place in the affairs 
 of British Columbia. Born in Edinburgh in 1819, 
 and educated at Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn, 
 he succeeded to the office of chief-justice of the 
 united colonies of British Columbia and Vancou- 
 ver Island in 1866, Needham, the chief-justice 
 of the latter, who had followed Cameron in 1858, 
 having been transferred to Trinidad. To Begbie, 
 perhaps more than any other man, the colony owed 
 the healthful ordinances, the liberal provisions of 
 government, and the unbroken reign of peace and 
 order which it enjoyed almost from the moment of 
 its birth. There will be occasion on a later page to 
 notice at least one example of the practical states- 
 manship of this remarkable man. 
 
 W. Wymond Hanley was appointed collector 
 of customs and Chartres Brew, who had served 
 with distinction in the Crimea, chief of the con- 
 
 239 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 stabulary. Travaillot and Hicks were nominated 
 assistant commissioners of Crown lands at Thomp- 
 son River and Yale, and W. H. Be vis, revenue 
 officer at Langley. The colonial secretary was 
 W. A. G. Young, and the treasurer, W. D. 
 Gosset. James D. Pemberton, the surveyor-general 
 of V ancouver Island, acted for a time in the same 
 capacity in British Columbia, with B. W. Pearse 
 as his first assistant. By October 27th, 1858, it 
 may be remarked, the governor was able to forward 
 a report from Pemberton on the important subject 
 of the disposal of Crown lands which included a 
 proposal to use the 49th parallel as a base in all 
 surveys, with a suggestion that mineral lands should 
 be held at £1 per acre, town sites according to the 
 value of location, and agricultural lands at consider- 
 ably less. 
 
 On the subject of officers, in general, Douglas was 
 under instructions to make his selections, where 
 possible, in England, it being regarded as of “great 
 importance to the general social welfare and dig- 
 nity of the colony that gentlemen should be en- 
 couraged to come from this kingdom, not as mere 
 adventurers seeking employment but in the hope 
 of obtaining professional occupations for which 
 they are calculated ; such for instance as stipendiary 
 magistrates, or gold commissioners.” A warning was 
 again added against favouritism to the employees 
 of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and it was again 
 declared that for the avoidance of all appearance of 
 240 
 
EARLY APPOINTMENTS 
 
 local preference “ careful appointments should be 
 made in England.” Up to June 30th, 1859, Doug- 
 las had recommended the following officers, among 
 others, in British Columbia, nearly every name in 
 the list having since passed into the history of the 
 community: W. R. Spalding, as stipendiary mag- 
 istrate and justice of the peace at Queenborough ; 
 Peter OReilly, Thomas Elwyn and H. M. Ball to 
 the same offices at Langley, Lillooet and Lytton, 
 respectively; Charles S. Nicoll, to be high sheriff at 
 Port Douglas; E. H. Sanders, as assistant gold 
 commissioner at Fort Yale ; Charles Good, as chief 
 clerk in the colonial secretary’s office; John Cooper, 
 as chief clerk of the treasury; W. H. McCrea, as 
 clerk in the Custom House; A. I. Bushby, to be 
 registrar of the Supreme Court; Charles Wylde, as 
 revenue officer at Langley. In addition there were 
 resident at New Westminster, W. D. Gosset, trea- 
 surer; F. G. Claudet, assayer; and C. A. Bacon, 
 melter. In later years the number of applicants 
 for office coming from Great Britain, often with 
 influential letters of introduction, was a source of 
 no small embarrassment to Douglas. 
 
 It was indeed an extraordinary community to 
 which the offices of government were now to be 
 extended. Scattered along the reaches of the lower 
 Fraser or clambering in widely scattered bands 
 over the mountainous divides in search of further 
 fields, not less than thirty thousand miners had 
 rushed into the district, — of a class, the most un- 
 
 241 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 bridled in the world. Of these, however, scarcely 
 more than four thousand were left at the end of 
 the summer season, the difficulties of the high 
 water and of the terrific rapids and canyons of the 
 Fraser having driven out the rest. Another influx 
 occurred in October, but it was of small account 
 compared with the first. The bars began a few 
 miles above Hope, and on the thirteen which lay 
 between that point and Y ale two or three thousand 
 men were digging in the sands. At Yale there was 
 another seven or eight hundred. Tents and log 
 huts provided shelter. Provisions, once the first 
 rush was over, were fairly abundant at these lower 
 points. Bacon, salmon, bread, tea and coffee formed 
 the staple diet; and a good meal could be bought 
 for one dollar. Milk and butter were unknown. High 
 spirits prevailed save among the few whom the un- 
 accustomed hardships and deprivations were slowly 
 grinding to death. On the whole, though the camps 
 held many a wild and abandoned character, acts 
 of lawlessness were singularly infrequent; but the 
 mass was as a smouldering fire ready to burst into 
 a flame of revolt on provocation of its untamed 
 sense of justice. Above Yale a different story was 
 told. Ingress barred by the tremendous “ lower 
 big canyon” and “upper big canyon” of the Fraser, 
 and by the increasing savagery of the natives, only 
 the most reckless and determined had forced their 
 way thither. Still higher, on the Thompson, a few 
 who had crossed from the Upper Columbia by the old 
 242 
 
SECOND VISIT TO THE FRASER 
 
 trail of the Hudson’s Bay Company, were fighting 
 slow starvation in the absence of stores and the 
 possibility of bringing in supplies. With the excep- 
 tion of the scattered and demoralized fur traders 
 and the outraged and exasperated Indians, such in 
 1858 was the colony of British Columbia. 
 
 During his tenure of the double office, Douglas 
 was of necessity an itinerant governor of the main- 
 land colony, and in the record of his several visits, 
 set forth in ample detail in the reports which he 
 forwarded to the colonial office, a large part of 
 the early history of British Columbia is to be read. 
 The first of these visits has been already mentioned. 
 The second was undertaken in the September fol- 
 lowing his appointment as governor. A force of 
 marines from H.M.S. Satellite , then acting as 
 guard ship in British Columbia waters, made ready 
 to accompany him, in view of recent troubles with 
 the Indians; it does not appear, however, that the 
 contingent was made use of. The first place of call 
 was Fort Hope, the station at which the detach- 
 ment of engineers not yet arrived were to be set at 
 work, and from which a road to Y ale was urgently 
 needed. Some three thousand miners and traders 
 were huddled at the time about the stockade in 
 tents or huts. Provisions were scarce and dear, pork 
 and flour selling at one dollar a pound. Bad blood be- 
 tween the Indians and the whites had been aroused, 
 the improper sale of liquor being probably the chief 
 cause. Realizing the impossibility of stamping out 
 
 243 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the traffic among the miners, Douglas determined 
 to turn it to the account of revenue by legalizing 
 it at the rate of $600 for a license. For selling 
 liquor to the natives the penalty was placed at $25 
 to $100. Town lots were largely demanded and no 
 difficulty was experienced in disposing of a large 
 number under leases terminable at the pleasure of 
 the Crown, held at a monthly rental of £4 8s. pay- 
 able in advance on the understanding that the 
 holder would be allowed a pre-emption right of pur- 
 chase when the land was sold, in which case the 
 rent would count as part of the purchase money. 
 Aliens might hold lands for three years, after which 
 they must become naturalized ; failing, they would 
 either forfeit their holdings or be forced to convey 
 them to British subjects. The organization of a 
 police force proved impracticable owing to the high 
 wages prevailing, the earnings of the miners in the 
 neighbourhood, which fixed the standard, ranging 
 from £1 to £5 a day. So, too, the idea of a court- 
 house and jail was abandoned for lack of the sum of 
 £1,000 which the erection would have required. A 
 justice of the peace and revenue officer, however, 
 was appointed, and a chief constable sworn in. Mr. 
 George Pearkes, the Crown solicitor for Vancou- 
 ver Island, who accompanied Douglas, Begbie not 
 yet having arrived, sat at the head of a commission 
 which brought various offenders to justice; among 
 the latter a miner named Eaton who had murdered 
 a comrade was sentenced to transportation for life. 
 
 244 
 
INAUGURATION CEREMONIES 
 
 The enforcement of such penalties in the absence 
 of any penal settlement and owing to the heavy 
 expense of deportation was another of the difficul- 
 ties of Douglas. From Hope the governor jour- 
 neyed to Yale, visiting the different encampments 
 by the way. Here grants of land were made on the 
 same conditions as at Hope, a justice of the peace 
 appointed, together with a chief constable at $150 
 per month. A police magistrate was also appointed 
 at Lower Fountain ville. The governor returned on 
 September 26th, having by his speeches and re- 
 forms done much to create content among the 
 miners and to allay the irritation of the natives. 
 
 On November 17th an imposing party of offi- 
 cials left Victoria for the headquarters of the 
 new colony. The governor was in command, with 
 Rear-Admiral Baynes, Cameron, the chief-justice 
 of Vancouver Island, and Begbie, the judge of 
 British Columbia, who with several officers of the 
 Royal Engineers, had now arrived ; and their 
 mission was the formal launching of the colony of 
 British Columbia. They sailed in H.M.S Satel- 
 lite , with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Otter in 
 attendance. Within the mouth of the Fraser, the 
 Beaver and the Recovery received the party, which 
 was landed at new Fort Langley. The day of the 
 ceremonial broke dark and lowering. A guard of 
 honour received His Excellency amid the firing of a 
 salute; and in the presence of about one hundred 
 persons assembled in a large room of the fort, the 
 
 245 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 weather rendering a meeting in the open impos- 
 sible, the oaths of office were taken, first by Begbie 
 as judge, and afterwards by Douglas as governor. 
 Proclamation was made of the Act establishing the 
 colony; of an instrument indemnifying the officers 
 of the government from any irregularities that 
 might have been committed during the interval 
 prior to the establishment of the Act; declaring 
 English law as the law of the colony; and revoking 
 the exclusive privileges of the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany. The governor did not leave the fort until 
 the following day, when a salute of fourteen guns 
 pealed forth in his honour. 
 
 It was expected that New Langley, or, as it was 
 now called, Derby, where these simple rites had 
 taken place, would form the permanent capital of 
 the colony, and with that in view a survey of the 
 town was made and a sale of lots held soon after 
 the departure of the governor. The upset price 
 was placed at $100, but so spirited was the bidding 
 that many of the lots brought from $200 to $400, 
 and some of choice locations as high as $750 each. 
 In all, the sum of $68,000 was realized from the 
 sale of about four hundred lots. Work was begun 
 upon a barracks for the Engineers, and tenders 
 were invited for a court-house, a jail, a church and 
 a parsonage. A proclamation to authorize the levy- 
 ing of customs duties was issued. In the midst of 
 these and other preparations, however, Colonel 
 Moody with his second in command, Captain J. M. 
 
 246 
 
NEW WESTMINSTER 
 
 Grant, arrived, and their report, on military and 
 other grounds, was unfavourable to Langley. It is 
 possible that the close proximity of a large block 
 of lands held in reserve by the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany may have had something to do with the 
 original choice. After a careful survey of the river, 
 the site of New Westminster, some distance lower 
 down and on the opposite bank, was approved, and 
 the purchasers of lots at Langley allowed to ex- 
 change them for locations in the new town. A dis- 
 pute arose as to the naming of the capital, Moody 
 proposing Queenborough, Douglas Queensborough, 
 and Young objecting to both as a paraphrase of 
 Victoria. The difficulty was referred for settlement 
 to the queen who conferred on the place the title 
 by which it has since been known. In laying out 
 the town, a proposal that one-quarter should be 
 reserved for purchasers in England and other col- 
 onies was vetoed by the colonial secretary as a 
 stimulus to speculation by non-residents. In the 
 following J une a satisfactory sale of lots took place 
 at New Westminster, three hundred and ten being 
 sold for $ 89 , 000 . The largest sum paid for a single 
 lot was $ 1 , 925 . In the meantime tenders for various 
 public buildings had been received, and “Sapper- 
 ton,” the quarter chosen for the accomodation of 
 the Engineers, was already rising in a spot notable 
 for its romantic beauty. 
 
 Prior to this and immediately upon his arrival in 
 the colony, Colonel Moody and the Engineers had 
 
 247 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 rendered prompt and excellent service in a matter 
 of a wholly different nature. This was the affair of 
 Hill’s Bar, the richest and most populous camp on 
 the river, and the headquarters for whatever dis- 
 content the restrictions of British law and govern- 
 ment had created in the breasts of the foreign 
 miners. Beginning in a quarrel of rival magistrates, 
 the matter was fast assuming the appearance of 
 an armed collision between the Yale and Hill’s 
 Bar camps, the latter under the leadership of one 
 McGowan, a notorious ex-judge of California, now 
 a fugitive from the vigilance committee of San 
 Francisco. Moody in response to a despatch threw 
 forward a company of Engineers to Hope, while a 
 hundred marines and blue-jackets from the Plum- 
 per and the Satellite were landed at Langley. With 
 Begbie and Lieutenant Mayne of the Plumper alone, 
 Moody himself went on to Yale, with the object of 
 investigating in person the causes and true propor- 
 tions of the disturbance. The first church service in 
 Yale was held by Moody during this visit. An un- 
 provoked assault by McGowan during his stay 
 confirmed the opinion that occasion alone was 
 wanting for the whole community of miners to 
 break into open insubordination. Under cover of 
 night, accordingly, the Engineers were ordered up 
 to Yale and the marines set in motion at Langley. 
 The vigour and celerity of the demonstration had 
 the desired effect. Apologies were tendered by 
 McGowan and the incipient dissatisfaction was 
 248 
 
ROADS 
 
 checked before it had time to gather. After a fur- 
 ther outrage McGowan fled the country. Though 
 not devoid of travesty, the incident was of whole- 
 some effect upon the scattered and irresponsible 
 community as showing at least the energy and 
 power of the government and its determination to 
 enforce good order. 
 
 Even prior to the coming of the Royal Engineers 
 and the establishment of the colony, the governor 
 had launched his famous undertaking of opening 
 up the country by means of roads, for which, if for 
 no other achievement, his administration merits the 
 supreme praise of efficiency. Here, as in so many 
 cases, Douglas’s long and thorough training in the 
 needs and methods of the fur trade stood the col- 
 ony in good stead. With Victoria as centre many 
 miles of excellent roadway had been built in the 
 neighbouring districts of Vancouver Island. When, 
 therefore, on the discovery of gold on the Fraser, 
 the need of roads became the problem of the hour, 
 no lack of official will or understanding had to be 
 overcome. How this need was met in the earliest 
 instance has been already hinted at in the words of 
 the colonial secretary to Moody. As an illustration 
 of the resourcefulness of Douglas and his complete 
 command of those rebellious forces which at the 
 time were all he had at his disposal — forces which 
 in less trained or skilful hands might have run 
 only in disorganized or harmful channels — the 
 
 249 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 building of the first trail to the Fraser diggings is 
 of more than passing interest. 
 
 To the miners who had braved successfully the 
 dangers of the sea passage from California, there 
 still remained to surmount the swift and treacher- 
 ous current of the Fraser, narrowed into a torrent 
 above Yale. Monopoly was soon to lay an added 
 tribute on the country’s development, the foreign 
 owners of the steamboats plying on the lower 
 river having joined to raise the cost of transport 
 from £5 to £14 a ton, a charge that brought 
 the inhabitants above to the verge of starvation. 
 By the power of withholding the privilege of regis- 
 tration, however, this evil was in time corrected, 
 and the obstacles against which Douglas fought 
 in the present instance were those of nature alone. 
 From Yale, no other avenue was open to the mines 
 which lay beyond, than the rough and precipitous 
 footpath of the river’s edge, where, on men’s backs 
 to and fro over the cliff, the food and tools of the 
 miners had perforce to be conveyed. How to trans- 
 port supplies to the front around these difficulties 
 became at once the all-important question. To 
 some returning miners a route from Anderson 
 Lake to Lillooet, thence by Harrison Lake and 
 river to the Fraser, was shown by the Indians. The 
 distance was seventy miles, over a generally level 
 country. There were five hundred miners at Victoria 
 on their way to the diggings, restless and idle men 
 through the lack of easy transport. With instant 
 250 
 
THE TRAIL TO THE DIGGINGS 
 
 appreciation of the situation, Douglas adopted the 
 following plan for the construction of a pack road 
 by the route described. In consideration of a de- 
 posit of $25 and an agreement to work upon the 
 trail until it was finished, the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany at Victoria agreed to transport the miners to 
 the point of commencement on Harrison River, 
 feed them during the work, and at the end return 
 the value of their deposit in supplies at Victoria 
 prices. The combination of credit and cooperation 
 involved in the plan had been suggested by the 
 miners themselves and at once engaged their sup- 
 port. The work was speedily completed, and at the 
 end the men received their money back, their trans- 
 portation being reckoned a fair return for their 
 labour, while the company in addition to the tem- 
 porary use of the money deposited was left with a 
 toll road of infinitely greater value than the trans- 
 portation and provisions it had cost. Some dis- 
 agreement arose as to the point at which the sup- 
 plies covenanted by the company should be de- 
 livered, the men holding that the upper end of the 
 trail had been implied while the company declared 
 for the lower. This at the time was an issue of some 
 importance, beans which cost 1 \ cents a pound at 
 Victoria being worth 5 cents on the lower Fraser 
 and $1.00 at the upper end of the new road. The 
 dispute was ended by a compromise, the goods 
 being delivered in the middle. The home govern- 
 ment read a somewhat exalted lesson from this 
 
 251 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 achievement, as Douglas was often to be reminded. 
 If the settlers would combine so readily in the con- 
 struction of a road, united effort it was thought 
 might safely be reckoned upon in the formation of 
 a police, the establishment of law, the collection of 
 revenue, and in the other efforts that might be 
 necessary to make life secure and the community 
 prosperous. 
 
 As it proved, this notable feat was but the pre- 
 lude of a general plan of road building which under 
 the existing conditions might justly be termed 
 colossal. Roads followed the development of the 
 country everywhere ; no difficulty or cost of con- 
 struction was permitted to stand in the way once 
 the need was thoroughly demonstrated. A wagon 
 road from the Harrison to the Upper Fraser, an en- 
 largement in part of the first pack road, was built 
 in stages by the Royal Engineers in the two years 
 following their arrival. 44 The construction of the 
 Harrison or Lillooet road,” wrote Douglas in 1861, 
 4 4 has been the great source of expenditure this sea- 
 son, that work having cost the colony nearly 
 £14,000. Large as the outlay may appear it very in- 
 adequately represents the value of this important 
 public work which has removed the difficulty of ac- 
 cess and the great impediment to the development 
 of the mineral regions of British Columbia.” Hope 
 and Similkameen were also connected by a road 
 surveyed and built by Mr. E. Dewdney (after- 
 wards minister of the interior for Canada and 
 252 
 
THE WAGON ROAD TO CARIBOO 
 
 still later lieutenant-governor of British Columbia), 
 in conjunction with Mr. Walter Moberley, C.E. 
 This road, as subsequently extended and known as 
 the Dewdney trail, passed through the southern in- 
 terior as far as Fort Steele in East Kootenay, and 
 formed for many years a well-used route of travel. 
 Every season saw the completion of several im- 
 portant reaches in these and other links of the system 
 which Douglas devised, all in accordance with a 
 comprehensive plan. But the crowning work of the 
 series was the completion of the great wagon road to 
 Cariboo. From Yale along the rocky canyons and 
 defiles of the Fraser, it wound past Lytton and the 
 Thompson by way of Ashcroft and the Bonaparte, 
 joining the road from Lillooet at Clinton, and form- 
 ing with other units of the plan a mighty artery of 
 travel deep into the heart of the gold country. Even 
 by present standards it was no mean feat of engineer- 
 ing. It opened a region of unexpected richness for 
 agriculture : how rich in gold it was to prove will 
 be referred to further on. 
 
 It would seem that even larger plans than these 
 had crossed the mind of Douglas. The trail from 
 Hope to Kootenay, in his ambitious vision, might 
 one day cross the Rockies, meeting at Edmonton a 
 similar road built westward from the Canadas, the 
 two to form a single great highway across the con- 
 tinent by which immigrants from the eastern 
 colonies might enter the country, — for Douglas 
 looked rather to Canada than to England for the 
 
 253 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 replenishing of the Pacific settlements. The dream 
 was realized more fully than even Douglas would 
 have dared to hope when, within twenty years of 
 his own achievements, an army of men were at 
 work upon the mountain section of the Canadian 
 Pacific Railway. 
 
 With the building of the system of communica- 
 tions of which the end was the opening up of 
 Cariboo, the work of the Royal Engineers was 
 finished. How large a part they had played in 
 the early history of the colony may have been sur- 
 mised from the few references given above that 
 show them in the forefront of the colony’s early 
 development. Some feeling against their employ- 
 ment and the expense thereby incurred had arisen, 
 and in 1863 it was deemed advisable that they 
 should disband. Colonel Moody and some twenty- 
 five of the force returned to England under the 
 terms of their original agreement ; the rest received 
 grants of land and became permanent residents of 
 the country. 
 
 In the record of official visits and reports that 
 throw a light upon the early history of the colony, 
 mention should be made of a notable journey taken 
 by Mr. Justice Begbie in the spring of 1859. Ac- 
 companied by Nicoll, high sheriff of British Col- 
 umbia, and by Bushby, as assize clerk and registrar, 
 he proceeded by way of the Fountains to the 
 Upper Fraser, returning by the Lillooet route to 
 Langley. The points which chiefly impressed the 
 254 
 
MATTHEW BAILLIE BEGBIE 
 
 judge were, the ready submission of the foreign 
 population to the will of the executive ; the 
 preponderance of the Californian element in the 
 population; the richness, both auriferous and agri- 
 cultural, of the country; the need of fixity of 
 tenure for the promotion of agriculture; and the 
 total absence of means of communication, render- 
 ing industrial occupations of whatever sort, with 
 the single exception of gold-digging, practically 
 impossible. More important, however, than his 
 observations upon the condition of the young 
 colony, Begbie established on this visit that 
 character for stern justice and utter fearlessness, 
 which left a lasting imprint on the progress of 
 British Columbia. His administration of the law 
 amongst those lawless multitudes had all the force 
 and directness of the vigilance committee, with- 
 out its passion. A lawyer to the core, he could 
 do right in spite of law. He made himself the 
 guardian rather than the judge of British Columbia, 
 and he accomplished this result by his unflinch- 
 ing resolve that crime of no degree should go 
 unpunished. No region in all that wild and inac- 
 cessible territory was too remote for the strong' 
 and searching arm of his justice, and the wrong 
 done to an Indian or a Chinaman met with as 
 prompt and sure requital as that done to a white 
 man. With the knowledge gained in a few months’ 
 time that in the hands of Begbie justice was swift 
 as it was inflexible, the battle of law and order 
 
 255 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 was already won, and the influence of the judge 
 throughout the colony became greater perhaps 
 than that of any other man. 
 
 It will be necessary, too, before leaving this per- 
 sonal chronicle, to notice the visit which Douglas 
 paid to the mainland colony in the autumn of 1859. 
 The tour included New Westminster, Langley, 
 Douglas, Hope, and Yale, and was extended 
 through the passes of the Fraser to Spuzzum and 
 the mining districts west of that locality. There 
 had been a decline in the number of miners since 
 the previous year, and the governor estimated the 
 entire white population of the colony at not more 
 than six thousand men. The absence of wives and 
 children was deplored. At the time, the exports of 
 gold from British Columbia were valued at £14,000 
 monthly, but the estimate did not include the large 
 amount remaining in the hands of the miners. No 
 schools had yet been established. With regard to 
 the importance of agriculture as a factor making 
 for stability and permanence, the governor’s views 
 were pressed as follows : “ The colony is yet des- 
 titute of one highly important element : it has no 
 farming class, the population being almost entirely 
 composed of miners and merchants. The attention 
 of the government has been very earnestly directed 
 to the means of providing for that want by the en- 
 couragement of agricultural settlers, a class that 
 must eventually form the basis of the population, 
 cultivate and improve the face of the country, and 
 256 
 
POLICY OF THE GOVERNOR 
 
 render it a fit habitation for civilized man. The 
 miner is at best a producer, and leaves behind him 
 no traces but those of desolation ; the merchant is 
 allured by the hope of gain ; but the durable pros- 
 perity and substantial wealth of states is, no doubt, 
 derived from the cultivation of the soil. Without 
 the farmer’s aid British Columbia must ever remain 
 a desert — be drained of its wealth, and dependent 
 on other countries for daily food.” The report also 
 referred to the road-building operations of the mo- 
 ment in the following terms which convey very 
 clearly the views of Douglas on the subject of his 
 greatest work : “ The great object of opening roads 
 from the sea-coast into the interior of the country, 
 and from New Westminster to Burrard’s Inlet and 
 Pitt River, continues to claim a large share of my 
 attention. The labour involved in these works is 
 enormous ; but so essential are they as a means of 
 settling and developing the resources of the country, 
 that their importance can hardly be over-rated ; and 
 I, therefore, feel it incumbent on me to strain every 
 nerve in forwarding the progress of undertakings 
 so manifestly conducive to the prosperity of the 
 colony, and which, at the same time, cannot fail, 
 ere long, to produce a large increase in the public 
 revenue. We hope to complete the last section 
 of a pack road leading, by the left bank of the 
 Fraser, from Derby to Lytton, a distance of one 
 hundred and seventy miles, on or before February 
 1st next.” 
 
 257 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Inseparably associated with the early progress of 
 the colony, and especially with those great under- 
 takings to which reference has just been made — 
 great both from their magnitude, the expenditures 
 which they entailed, and the necessities which they 
 met — was the vexing problem of finance. Here as 
 on other points that will come in due course to be 
 noted the governor and the home authorities were 
 not always in agreement. Douglas, under stress of 
 the immediate need, begged repeatedly for a grant 
 from parliament, or, failing that, for a loan which 
 the colony might repay when it had received the 
 impetus which a wise expenditure would give to 
 the development of its resources. In addition to 
 roads, a seaport town, to render the colony with its 
 five hundred miles of seaboard less dependent upon 
 Victoria, was needed. For this purpose the governor, 
 taking into account the difficulty of access to the 
 Fraser, and looking forward to the time when 
 the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver 
 Island might be one, would have chosen Esqui- 
 malt, leaving the navigation of the Gulf of Georgia 
 to a class of small, safe and swift steamers. Light- 
 houses at least the colony must have. To Doug- 
 las, with the distrust of the foreigner which he 
 could never wholly dismiss, the military protection 
 of the colony was among the government’s chief 
 responsibilities. The Satellite which was placed 
 on the coast-guard service in 1858 had been 
 almost immediately withdrawn, and though the 
 258 
 
FINANCES 
 
 admiral ,of the Pacific squadron had given what 
 help he could, many boats had escaped the customs 
 and several unlicensed miners had found their way 
 to the diggings. The Royal Engineers, of course, 
 had other and more pressing occupations than that 
 of police duty. To these, and similar appeals, how- 
 ever, the colonial office had but one reply. It 
 seemed inexplicable to Downing Street that a coun- 
 try whose sands were of gold and whose population 
 had sprung up with such incredible rapidity should 
 find the question of a revenue difficult. In vain 
 Douglas pointed to the extraordinary difficulties 
 presented in the opening up of the country; to the 
 outflow of population, easily to be prevented if em- 
 ployment on the proposed works were available; 
 and to the narrow means that were at the colony’s 
 disposal, especially in view of the high level of 
 wages and prices which continued as long as free 
 placer gold constituted the source of the country’s 
 prosperity. He was met only with repeated com- 
 mendations to thrift and economy, it being left to 
 his own sagacity to suggest how that policy could 
 be exercised with the greatest safety. Again and 
 yet again it was enunciated that both British Col- 
 umbia and Vancouver Island must be self-support- 
 ing. He was at times even reproached with the 
 slow progress made in road-building. 
 
 Over sanguine, it may be, the governor was, in 
 his estimate of the speed with which the colony 
 was likely to attain its full development, and of the 
 
 259 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 extent to which its progress would be helped by 
 public works alone. Yet it is easy to perceive where- 
 in the task of Douglas without help from England 
 must have seemed as the making of bricks without 
 straw. In the end, however, the conservative policy 
 of the colonial office cannot be charged with hav- 
 ing retarded a healthy growth. On one point of 
 importance it was unquestionably right. The col- 
 ony had no cause to burden its finances with 
 the support of a military organization. The assis- 
 tance which the admiralty was able in a regular 
 way to afford proved entirely adequate to any need 
 of this kind that arose, and the principle that if 
 from England skill and discipline were sent the 
 colony should furnish the raw material of a force, 
 was at least well calculated to instil the habits of 
 self-reliance and freedom. So also, a suggestion that 
 a steamer should be supplied by Great Britain for 
 the conveyance of troops and stores on the Fraser 
 was abandoned without material inconvenience. To 
 the appeal for lighthouses, which involved an ex- 
 penditure of £7,000, a favourable answer was given 
 — to the extent at least of one-half the cost and the 
 loan of the whole amount, the colonies to assume 
 the other moiety as a joint obligation. 
 
 On the whole it was an unmixed boon that 
 the influence of the home government, in so far 
 as it prevailed, was of this restraining character. 
 No feature of the rule of Douglas aroused more 
 lasting opposition than the lavish scale on which he 
 260 
 
REVENUE 
 
 spent the income of the colony. It is true that very 
 great achievements could be pointed to. Lawless- 
 ness was effectually suppressed — or rather, as has 
 been seen, was never afforded the opportunity of 
 raising its head; a self-supporting postal department 
 was established ; an assay office was founded and a 
 mint projected; the navigation of the Fraser and 
 Harrison rivers was improved ; and, finally, com- 
 munication with the mines, even with those of the 
 remotest regions, was opened up and maintained on 
 the efficient scale that has been noted. It was not 
 to be supposed that results like these could be 
 achieved without a struggle. The customs tax of 
 ten per cent., and the license fees of the miners 
 formed, in addition to the proceeds of land sales, 
 the only sources of revenue. The taking out of 
 licenses, as might have been expected, was avoided 
 in every possible way by the miners, and the fees 
 paid only upon compulsion. An attempt to collect 
 a royalty on the gold output proved a failure, no 
 means being at hand to compel the miners to 
 announce their findings or to support the army of 
 inspectors which would have been required to make 
 an official surveillance effective. The whole led 
 Douglas at one time to suggest an entire remodel- 
 ling of the mining regulations under a plan by 
 which the gold-fields might have been treated as 
 Crown lands to be let in large or small allotments 
 at a fixed rental. As the regulations stood, how- 
 ever, under the Act proclaimed in 1859, a not in- 
 
 261 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 considerable sum, despite evasions, was annually 
 reaped by the colony. Nevertheless the end of the 
 administration of Douglas found the colony bur- 
 dened with a yearly increasing debt, its loans 
 barely negotiable in the London market, and its 
 tax rate risen to nearly £19 per capita annually, 
 or about eight times the rate then prevailing in 
 Great Britain. Only by the most stringent econom- 
 ies in the years immediately following was the 
 credit of the community preserved, so that by 1871 
 the rate had been reduced to approximately £5, or 
 by over two-thirds. On the other hand, it is to be 
 borne in mind that without the investments made 
 by Douglas the development of the interior would 
 undoubtedly have been retarded, while the control 
 of the government over the heterogeneous and 
 foreign population might have been weakened to 
 the point of danger. 
 
 The marked and plenary instructions of the col- 
 onial office with reference to the status of the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company in British Columbia, sug- 
 gest some mention of the subsequent career of that 
 corporation in the community with whose begin- 
 ning it was so closely identified. The present is an 
 appropriate connection in which to include a state- 
 ment of this character, for of all the relations which 
 the company bore to the colony those involving 
 the question of finances were the most provocative 
 of dispute, while the features of the rule of Doug- 
 262 
 
STATUS OF THE COMPANY 
 
 las of which the government of Great Britain took 
 closest cognizance were those which concerned his 
 dealings with the company, his former master. The 
 financial problem resolved itself into the question 
 whether the colony should be responsible for the 
 debts contracted by the company in the initial 
 stages of its rule on Vancouver Island. The position 
 assumed towards Douglas by the imperial govern- 
 ment in the other matter had a very patent ex- 
 planation. From his seventeenth year Douglas had 
 breathed no other atmosphere than that of the 
 great fur-trading monopoly. It was impossible that 
 he should see from any other point of view. If 
 specific instances were wanted, they were furnished 
 by the acts with which on the first discovery of 
 gold in the Fraser Valley he had sought to impose 
 a tribute for the company on the development 
 which immediately set in. It will be remembered 
 that, on the occasion referred to, Douglas had pro- 
 claimed that for vessels other than those of the 
 company to navigate the waters of the Fraser was 
 an infringement of the company’s rights; and that 
 in a proposal which his government vetoed he 
 would have bound the Pacific Mail Company to 
 carry the company’s goods and no others. For acts 
 like these, the fact that his first commission as 
 governor was held in conjunction with the office 
 of chief factor, was to blame, rather than Douglas 
 himself. But even when his direct connection 
 with the company had been severed, a spirit of 
 
 263 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 partizanship was bound to continue and to render 
 necessary the most stringent measures of preven- 
 tion. How that spirit wrought in the bosom of the 
 governor is well illustrated in a passage which 
 occurs in one of his later despatches, which shows 
 as much by its tone as by the words themselves, 
 his attitude to his master of so many years : 
 
 “I will take the liberty,” he wrote, “which I feel 
 satisfied you will under the circumstances excuse, 
 of correcting an erroneous impression which ap- 
 pears to pervade the public mind of England. I 
 allude to the often asserted opinion that the Hud- 
 son’s Bay Company have made an unjust and op- 
 pressive use of their power in this country, a state- 
 ment which I can assure Her Majesty’s govern- 
 ment is altogether unfounded. On the contrary, it 
 would be an easy matter to prove that they have 
 been of signal service to their country, and that the 
 British territory on the north-west coast is an 
 acquisition won for the Crown entirely by the en- 
 terprise and energy of the Hudson’s Bay Company. 
 For, on commencing business operations in this 
 quarter the whole coast was held by foreigners, and 
 it is only since the year 1846 that the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company have derived any real protection from 
 the license to trade, as until that epoch the trade 
 was open to all citizens of the United States, in 
 common with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Per- 
 haps you will excuse me saying this much, as a 
 sense of iustiee leads me to exert the little influence 
 264 
 
LATER HISTORY OF THE COMPANY 
 
 I possess in protecting from injustice men who 
 have served their country so well. At this moment 
 I am making use of Hudson’s Bay Company’s es- 
 tablishments for every public office; and to their 
 servants, for want of other means, I commit in per- 
 fect confidence the custody of public money.” 
 
 As to the internal history of the company after 
 the lapse of its special privileges in 1859 , a few 
 words will suffice. On the retirement of Douglas, 
 Dallas became the president of the Victoria board 
 of management, of which Work and Dugald Mc- 
 Tavish were the other members, Ogden having 
 died in 1854 . Work died in 1861 , and as Dallas 
 had been moved to Rupert’s Land, McTavish 
 succeeded to the command, with Finlayson and 
 Tolmie on his board of advisers. In 1870 , Mc- 
 Tavish was tranferred to Montreal to fill a place 
 left vacant by the rise of Donald A. Smith in 
 the service, and James A. Grahame became the 
 head of the board. After Grahame, followed Will- 
 iam Charles in 1874 , with Alexander Monro as 
 manager of lands. But the building of the Canadian 
 Pacific Railway, the inflow of population, and the 
 imposition of the Canadian tariff, revolutionized 
 the old conditions of the trade. Winnipeg be- 
 came the centre of the Western Department as of 
 other portions of the company’s domain, the railway 
 permitting frequent visits from the chief commis- 
 sioner in charge. To-day a series of well conducted 
 retail stores in the leading centres of population as 
 
 265 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 well as in the outposts of settlement are all that 
 visibly remain, in the portions of the country that 
 have been opened to industry, of the once all- 
 powerful domination of the company in British 
 Columbia. 
 
 At least one result of the early rule of the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company is so important as to 
 warrant special mention. It may be laid wholly to 
 its influence that the opening years of settlement 
 in British Columbia were free from the terrible 
 scenes of Indian outrage. How great was that 
 good fortune may be understood by a glance at 
 the mining history of California or the later 
 chronicles of other of the western states. To the 
 Indians of British Columbia the rush of 1858 took 
 on the form of an armed and unprovoked invasion 
 of their territory. As they had received payment 
 previously for their furs, so now they demand- 
 ed payment for the gold of their streams and 
 mountains. Without the restraining influence of 
 the company, the product of nearly half a cen- 
 tury of intercourse centred now in Douglas as 
 the Indians’ trusted friend of many years, a war 
 of extermination might easily have been launch- 
 ed against the whites, especially against the 
 domineering and aggressive immigrants from the 
 United States. Expeditions overland from Ore- 
 gon in the early days of the inflow had been har- 
 assed and the stragglers cut off. On the Fraser, 
 however, in spite of constant provocation from the 
 266 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS 
 
 American miners, no outbreak occurred for some 
 time. An incipient collision was caused in 1858 by 
 the murder of two Frenchmen on the trail above 
 the canyons of the Fraser, but a band of miners 
 which forced its way to the forks of the Thompson 
 put the enemy to flight and was followed by a 
 second detachment which concluded a treaty of 
 peace with over two thousand natives between 
 Spuzzum and the Thompson. Douglas, who was 
 on his way to the diggings at the time of the dis- 
 turbance, did not deem further action necessary. 
 He had on a previous occasion stood between 
 the miner and the Indian with an impartiality that 
 took count of provocation on either side. The 
 native leader, a man of unusual energy of character 
 and corresponding influence with his tribe, had 
 been taken subsequently into the service of the 
 government, where he proved exceedingly useful 
 in the settlement of other difficulties. The justice 
 of the governor, who reminded the gold -seekers at 
 every turn that their position was one of sufferance 
 under Her Majesty’s government, that no abuses 
 would be tolerated, and that the law would protect 
 the Indian no less than the white man, was the 
 most effective instrument that could have been de- 
 vised in the interests of peace. In a short time the 
 Indians were engaged in the digging of gold in 
 perfect harmony with the other miners at wages 
 ranging from three to five dollars a day. Two mas- 
 sacres perpetrated by the Chilcotins in 1864 were 
 
 267 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 almost the only later outbreaks that occurred. In 
 other words, the fur trade had ceased to be, and 
 the company had bequeathed to the industry that 
 displaced it a docile and a useful native people. 
 
 One other gift, of curious interest to the ethno- 
 logist, the early traders handed down. Among the 
 first difficulties of the commerce of the north-west 
 coast, not the least was found in the surprising 
 number of the native languages. Within the limited 
 area of Oregon no less than twelve distinct linguis- 
 tic stocks, utterly dissimilar in words and grammar, 
 were represented, while many of these were further 
 split up into dialects which often differed widely 
 from each other. All alike were remarkable for 
 harshness and obscurity of pronunciation and con- 
 struction, besides being spoken over a very restric- 
 ted space. To provide some common means of com- 
 munication became an immediate necessity, if bar- 
 ter were to be established at all. The result was 
 that a trade language, called afterwards the “Chin- 
 ook jargon,” grew into existence. Though the 
 foreigners took no pains to learn the native langu- 
 ages, it inevitably happened that at Nootka, at first 
 the chief emporium of the trade, a few words of 
 the dialect there spoken became known, while the 
 Indians were made familiar with a few English or 
 Spanish expressions. When the trade shifted to the 
 Columbia, the Chinooks, quick at catching sounds, 
 acquired the new vocabulary, and the jargon in this 
 elementary form was in use among the natives at 
 268 
 
THE CHINOOK JARGON 
 
 as early a date as the visit of Lewis and Clark in 
 1804. Later, the Chinook language was drawn upon 
 for additional words; the French-Canadian voy - 
 ageur added his quota; and the jargon assumed a 
 regular form, and became a means of general in- 
 tercourse. In 1840, it contained about two hundred 
 and fifty words, of which eighteen were of Nootka 
 origin, forty-one were English, thirty-four French, 
 and one hundred and eleven Chinook. By 1863 the 
 number had doubled. Rude and formless as it was, 
 it has been the source of great and varied benefits. 
 Trade was made possible by it, friendly intercourse 
 between the tribes was stimulated, many deadly 
 feuds eliminated, and early missionary endeavour 
 assisted. If not a model language, the jargon may at 
 least have served to point the way to some higher 
 invention for the uses of an advancing civilization. 
 
 The mention of the Indian and his jargon 
 leads naturally to the subject of the missionary. 
 How the Jesuits from Canada were among the first 
 in Oregon has been already stated. From that time 
 forward, the Roman Catholic Church has never 
 ceased to labour in the vast field of the Pacific 
 slope. Father Demers was on Vancouver Island 
 prior to 1846. Before that, he had visited the 
 Upper Fraser. When in 1847 he was made a 
 bishop, his diocese included not only British Col- 
 umbia, but Alaska as well. The first Protestant 
 church in the colony was built by the Hudsons 
 Bay Company at Victoria in 1855. The Methodist 
 
 269 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Church sent its first missionaries to British Colum- 
 bia in 1859. Thomas Crosby, the greatest name 
 among them, arrived in 1862. Opening a school at 
 Nanaimo in 1863, Crosby had soon extended his in- 
 fluence over one hundred and eighty miles of the 
 coast, and over the Fraser valley as far as Yale. In 
 1874 he removed to Fort Simpson, whence in time 
 the field was extended over one hundred and fifty 
 miles to the north. A year before Crosby’s arrival, 
 the Presbyterian Church had begun the work of 
 evangelization among the Indians and the miners. 
 Perhaps the most signal achievement of the mis- 
 sionaries was that of William Duncan, a layman 
 sent out in 1856 under the auspices of the Church 
 of England Missionary Society, to the savage 
 Tsimpsean tribes of the northern coast. At Met- 
 lakahtla near Fort Simpson a thriving industrial 
 community sprang up where before the coming of 
 the missionary the most degraded natives of the 
 coast were given over wholly to violence and 
 superstition. Duncan’s aims were evangelistic pure- 
 ly, and the collision which occurred with his ec- 
 clesiastical superiors led to the removal of his col- 
 ony to Alaska after a prolonged and bitter contro- 
 versy. To the clergy of the Church of England 
 and of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who first 
 entered the field of missionary labour in British 
 Columbia, Douglas assigned a church, school and 
 dwelling-house site forming a block of four building 
 lots, or about an acre of land in extent, in all towns 
 270 
 
AFFAIRS ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 
 
 where they resided. He further recommended that 
 free grants of one hundred acres of rural land 
 should be made in aid of every cure in British Col- 
 umbia. The Duke of Newcastle, however, with 
 the experience of the Canadas in mind, while ap- 
 proving of the first arrangement, objected strongly 
 to the practice of making free grants as endow- 
 ments to livings. 
 
 While developments such as these were in pro- 
 gress in British Columbia, affairs on Vancouver 
 Island were not devoid of incident. Victoria sank 
 with the back-wave of the excitement of 1858, but 
 rose again, this time on a more stable basis, with 
 the discoveries of 1860-61 in Cariboo. The assembly 
 met at leisurely intervals. Matter for a lengthy 
 period of its debates was furnished in the proposed 
 organization of a joint stock company to supply 
 Victoria with water. Some useful wagon roads 
 were built in the neighbouring district. A registra- 
 tion act was passed. Education received some at- 
 tention. The miners temporarily resident in Victoria 
 were placated, chiefly through the personal tact 
 of the governor. With the increase in population 
 and the growth of political issues, the need for 
 newspapers was felt ; and the British Colonist 
 was founded in 1858, soon ranging itself, under 
 the editorship of Amor de Cosmos, in an op- 
 position, not always consistent, to the governor 
 and the council. Among the early occasions of 
 
 271 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 this opposition was an incident which well illustrates 
 the temper of the times, the character of Douglas 
 and the nature of the rule which he maintained. 
 
 The legislative assembly of the colony had 
 originally held its sessions in a building belonging 
 to the Hudsons Bay Company, which served at 
 once for the meetings of the House and as the 
 offices of government. More commodious quarters 
 becoming necessary, the governor proceeded to sup- 
 ply the want after the manner that seemed fitting. 
 On due thought, the land beyond James Bay com- 
 mended itself as a site, and a bridge was forthwith 
 thrown across to connect it with the city. As the 
 assembly was not asked for an appropriation (the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company as the proprietors of the 
 island contributing the necessary funds under the 
 arrangement of 1849 with the home government), 
 its consent to the change was not deemed necessary. 
 It soon appeared, however, that the assembly did 
 not share this view. Resentment at the governor’s 
 attitude ran high, and, in a resolution passed to pro- 
 test against the removal of the buildings, the action 
 of Douglas was denounced as unconstitutional and 
 a breach of privilege. The governor’s reply was 
 characteristic. The assembly had borne no share of 
 the financial burden involved in this or other 
 colonial improvements ; as for the bridge, it was the 
 plain prerogative of the Crown to build bridges 
 wherever the public convenience demanded, pro- 
 vided that no private rights were invaded. He added 
 27 2 
 
CLERGY RESERVES 
 
 an explanation of the reasons which had dictated 
 his choice of a site. The position of the governor, 
 under the existing constitution of the colony, was 
 impregnable, and the assembly had no alternative 
 but to yield. It may be added that time has set its 
 seal of approval on the governor’s action ; and the 
 present stately buildings of the province, erected in 
 1893, stand on the pleasant and convenient ground 
 that was selected by Douglas half a century ago. 
 
 Other matters which engaged the attention of 
 the island legislature in its early years were, the 
 legalizing of United States currency, the payment 
 of the liabilities of the colony, and the question of 
 clergy reserves. The first was a plain necessity. In 
 connection with the finances of the colony, the 
 assembly from the first refused to become liable for 
 the debts incurred during the regime of the Hud- 
 son’s Bay Company, and the latter was left to 
 settle its claims with the home government. The 
 question of clergy reserves arose out of the orig- 
 inal agreement between the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany and its clergyman on the island. Under this 
 arrangement the major part (£300 of a total of 
 £400) of the latter’s stipend was to be derived from 
 the sale of public lands at that time under the ad- 
 ministration of the company. On the extinguish- 
 ment of the company’s title in 1859, the question 
 of the continuance of this arrangement at once 
 arose. The appointment of the then incumbent of 
 the office had been intended, it appeared, as a per- 
 
 273 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 manent one; and it was necessary therefore to pro- 
 vide for his emolument. There can be little doubt 
 that if it had not been for the prompt and almost 
 violent antagonism which was manifested, the sit- 
 uation would have drifted imperceptibly into that 
 of a state- supported clergy. A reserve in excess of 
 two thousand acres had been already set apart in 
 Victoria alone, and the appointment of a bishop 
 and two other clergymen authorized by the home 
 government. The House of Assembly, however, 
 refused without popular warrant to confirm the 
 continuance of the old arrangement; and in the end 
 even the grant of one hundred acres which it was 
 proposed to make to the clergyman of the com- 
 pany was reduced to thirty and transferred under 
 trustees to the local church. His salary was thence- 
 forth paid by the contributions of his congregation 
 alone, supplemented by missionary funds sent out 
 from England. 
 
 Shortly after this signal service to the colony, 
 the first parliament of Vancouver Island was pro- 
 rogued, the date being November, 1859. The elec- 
 tions followed in January, 1860, and the new 
 House, of thirteen members, met about two months 
 later. Helmcken alone of the former assembly was 
 re-elected; and he was continued in the Speaker’s 
 chair. The second legislature lasted until 1863, 
 when it was succeeded by the third House, which 
 in turn continued until the union of the two col- 
 onies in 1866. 
 
 274 
 
THE SAN JUAN AFFAIR 
 
 To the period of the dual governorship belong 
 the more important of an extended series of nego- 
 tiations having to do with the interpretation and 
 enforcement of the Oregon boundary treaty con- 
 cluded in 1846. The San Juan affair (for by that 
 title the incident in question is usually known) had 
 its root, as will be understood, in times remote, and 
 its final solution was not reached until some years 
 after Douglas had closed his official career. It may 
 be dealt with in its entirety here, as, apart from its 
 intrinsic interest, it presents almost the sole view 
 of Douglas, in the higher sphere of international 
 politics, under stress of a delicate and at times 
 dangerous situation. 
 
 It will be remembered that by the treaty of 
 1846, the 49th parallel of latitude had been ac- 
 cepted as the boundary between the United States 
 and British territory from the Rocky Mountains to 
 the centre of the channel which divides Vancouver 
 Island from the mainland. From that point, it was 
 agreed, the line was to continue by the middle of 
 the channel southward to the Strait of Juan de 
 Fuca, by the middle of which in turn it should 
 proceed to the Pacific. Now, in the southern por- 
 tion of the Gulf of Georgia, below the point at 
 which the 49th parallel ceases as above to mark 
 the frontier, the Haro archipelago occurs; and as a 
 result of the configuration of these islands a choice 
 of passages was offered by which the boundary 
 might reach the lower waterway. At the time of 
 
 275 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the treaty only two of these straits had been sur- 
 veyed: the Canal de Haro, so named, as the archi- 
 pelago itself was named, from the Spanish ex- 
 plorer, — a strait seven miles in breadth, between 
 the group and Vancouver Island; and the channel 
 to the east, of half the width, known as Rosario 
 Strait, — otherwise as Vancouver Strait, Ringgold’s 
 Channel, or the Canal de Fidalgo. The question 
 immediately presented itself as to which of these 
 was intended to mark the boundary by the treaty 
 of 1846, the point involving the ownership of the 
 archipelago mentioned, made up of three large and 
 several smaller islands, of which San Juan, the most 
 valuable, contained about fifty thousand acres. 
 Though both nations, through over twenty years 
 of controversy, as wearisome as it was long drawn 
 out, attempted to prove that a definite understand- 
 ing existed at the time the treaty was agreed to, 
 it is obvious that the language of 1846 left room 
 for dispute and that neither of the governments in 
 that year took cognizance of the exact path of the 
 boundary as it passed from the Gulf of Georgia to 
 the Straits of Juan de Fuca. 
 
 The various steps by which the issue became 
 sharply defined, covering in all the first ten years 
 of the dispute, were briefly as follows. About the 
 time of the founding of Victoria, and as a part of 
 the general policy involved in that development, 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company had landed a number 
 of sheep and cattle on the Island of San Juan. The 
 276 
 
TAXATION ON SAN JUAN 
 
 colony prospered, and within a few years’ time not 
 less than several thousand head of live stock, in- 
 cluding sheep, cattle, swine and horses, were in- 
 cluded in the company’s establishment. A salmon 
 fishery also was erected in 1851, and the Americans 
 who had already begun to frequent the island were 
 warned to fish inshore. Thus matters remained for a 
 year longer, when the legislature of Oregon pro- 
 ceeded to organize the archipelago, without refer- 
 ence to any political significance which the opera- 
 tions of the British company might have, as a por- 
 tion of its domain. Again, in 1853, when the 
 territory of Washington took form, the islands 
 passed, or were regarded by the continental author- 
 ities as passing, under the new jurisdiction. No out- 
 ward change in conditions, however, occurred until 
 1854 when an attempt to levy duties by the United 
 States authorities on stock imported by the com- 
 pany led to a sharp dispute between the latter 
 and the officer deputed to enforce the tax. This 
 brought Douglas for a brief time on the scene, 
 but had little effect beyond calling forth an idle as- 
 sertion of sovereignty on the part of each nation. 
 No actual collection was made at the time. In 
 1855, however, thirty or more sheep of the com- 
 pany were seized and sold at auction by the sheriff 
 of Whatcom County, Washington. This at once 
 brought the affair into international prominence; 
 and in 1856 commissioners were appointed by 
 Great Britain and the United States to examine 
 
 277 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 into the data bearing thereon. Pending the ex- 
 pected settlement, by order of the Secretary of 
 State for the United States, no taxes were en- 
 forced on San Juan, though the island was not 
 acknowledged as a British possession. A curious 
 amenity during these early years was the protection 
 cheerfully afforded by the company to the United 
 States officials from the roving bands of Indians 
 whose descents were always of peculiar danger 
 to the “Boston” frontiersmen. 
 
 The commissioners appointed by Great Britain 
 were Captains Prevost and Richards of the Royal 
 Navy, the former of whom arrived in H.M.S. Sat- 
 ellite in June, 1857. The latter reached Victoria in 
 H.M.S. Plumper a few months later and at once 
 began an extended series of explorations and sur- 
 veys for the carrying out of which he had been 
 specially delegated. Mr. Archibald Campbell, with 
 a staff of astronomers and engineers, represented 
 the United States. By December, 1857, six formal 
 meetings had been held by the commissioners, end- 
 ing in a complete disagreement. The treaty, as 
 interpreted by the British, demanded that the 
 channel constituting the boundary from the 49th 
 parallel southward should possess three characteris- 
 tics: (1) it should separate the continent from Van- 
 couver Island; (2) it should admit of the boundary 
 being carried through it in a southerly direction; 
 and (3) it should be a navigable channel. In the 
 light of these requirements, it was urged against the 
 278 
 
THE ARGUMENTS 
 
 Canal de Haro and in favour of Rosario Strait 
 that the former could not be said to separate Van- 
 couver Island from the mainland, seeing that the 
 separation was already effected by the other chan- 
 nel ; that a line drawn through the Canal de Haro 
 must perforce run westerly for a considerable dis- 
 tance; that though the Haro channel answered to 
 the third demand, yet, from the rapidity and 
 variableness of its currents and its lack of anchor- 
 ages, it was less suitable for the navigation of 
 sailing vessels than Rosario Strait, which was the 
 channel followed by the vessels of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company since 1825. The occupation of San Juan 
 by the company for so many years was also held 
 to bind the island to the British colony. On the 
 other hand, the American commissioners contended 
 that of the several navigable passages connecting 
 the Gulf of Georgia with the Straits of Fuca, the 
 Canal de Haro was preeminent in width, depth, 
 and volume of water ; that it was the one usually 
 designated on the maps in use at the time the 
 treaty was under consideration ; that the other 
 navigable channels through the archipelago sepa- 
 rated mere groups of islands from each other; and 
 that the Canal de Haro, since it washed the shores 
 of Vancouver Island, was the only one that could 
 be said to divide the continent from that island. 
 The objection that the Canal de Haro would not 
 throughout its entire course carry the boundary line 
 in a southerly direction was not, in the American 
 
 279 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 view, well taken, seeing that the word “southerly” 
 was applied in the treaty equally to the Straits of 
 Juan de Fuca, the general course of which lay 
 north by west. In brief, it appeared to the United 
 States that the deflection of the boundary from the 
 49th parallel was sanctioned by the treaty with 
 the intention of securing Vancouver Island alone to 
 Great Britain and that with this broad principle 
 in view the archipelago should be considered as 
 belonging to the mainland and not to the great 
 coastal island. 
 
 Two years had been consumed in these and other 
 fruitless negotiations, for though a central passage 
 navigable to ships had been discovered by the 
 British survey party and proposed to the United 
 States by way of compromise no tangible result 
 had followed. Meanwhile a number of squatters, 
 consisting mainly of American miners on their re- 
 turn from the Fraser diggings, had settled on San 
 Juan Island. In the year 1859 they totaled some 
 twenty-nine, as opposed to nineteen servants of the 
 company. It was a collision between these diverse 
 local interests that brought on the most acute 
 phase of the dispute — a phase which but for the 
 conspicuous tact of the British authorities on the 
 spot might easily have plunged the nations into 
 war. 
 
 It seems that an American named Cutler who 
 had settled on the island in 1859 was much an- 
 noyed by the depredations of a hog belonging to 
 280 
 
TROOPS LANDED 
 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company, and had shot and 
 killed the animal. Of the altercation which followed 
 various accounts have survived. According to one, 
 the arrest of Cutler and his removal to Victoria for 
 trial was threatened. At least it was demanded by 
 the company that a stipendiary magistrate should 
 be stationed on the island. The then commander of 
 the military department of Oregon was General 
 Harney, a popular but injudicious officer, whose 
 southern origin has led to the suspicion that on the 
 eve of the war of secession he would have viewed 
 with equanimity the sowing of strife between the 
 United States and England. The news of the 
 Cutler affair reaching his ears during a visit to San 
 Juan, he accepted the version most unfavourable to 
 the British authorities, and, without mandate from 
 Washington, transferred a company of his command 
 to the island, for the protection, as he alleged, of 
 its American citizens. Other detachments followed 
 until the troops on San Juan reached a total of 
 four hundred and sixty-one, with eight thirty -two 
 pounders. A request from the governor for the 
 withdrawal of the force met with a peremptory re- 
 fusal, in the first instance from Pickett, the officer 
 in charge, and afterwards from Harney himself. 
 A suggestion of a joint military occupation subse- 
 quently made by Douglas was also refused in terms 
 that gave just grounds for indignation. At Victoria 
 the excitement was for a time intense and the pre- 
 sence of the Plumper , Satellite , Tribune and other 
 
 281 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 British ships of war, having on board a force greatly 
 superior to that which held San Juan, would easily, 
 under the provocation of the moment, have preci- 
 pitated an encounter but for the patience of 
 those in command. Under the statesmanlike policy 
 that was adopted, only a single vessel at a time was 
 kept in San Juan harbour, for show of occupation, 
 while the rest were held at a safe distance. When 
 the details of the affair reached Washington, the 
 fruits of this forbearance were quickly reaped. An 
 official investigation was conducted on the spot; 
 Harney was ultimately recalled; the officer who 
 had given offence on San Juan was removed; the 
 American troops were for the most part with- 
 drawn; and an arrangement was entered into by 
 which a force of British equal in numbers to those 
 that were left were landed without opposition on the 
 island. For twelve years the joint occupation was 
 continued amid perfect harmony and good-will. 
 
 The dispute, thus stripped of the element of 
 danger, continued for a short time longer to en- 
 gage the attention of the British minister and the 
 secretary of state at Washington, and then lapsed 
 into oblivion with the outbreak of the American civil 
 war. It revived for a moment in 1866 ; and in 1869 
 gathered so much notice as to suggest its refer- 
 ence to the president of the Swiss republic. It was 
 still unsettled, however, in 1871, when a joint high 
 commission met at W ashington to consider this and 
 other questions affecting the relations of the United 
 282 
 
FINAL SETTLEMENT 
 
 States and Great Britain in North America. After 
 a renewed discussion, as interminable as the first, it 
 was agreed that the whole affair should be sub- 
 mitted to the arbitration of the German Emperor. 
 Prevost was again the British representative at 
 Berlin, while Bancroft, the historian, acted for the 
 United States. Reports of experts were obtained 
 and the question was debated anew from every 
 standpoint. Finally, the Emperor declared his 
 award in favour of the United States. The date 
 was October 21st, 1872. In British Columbia, 
 where the result was accepted with equanimity, 
 though not without keen sense of loss, the hand of 
 time had wrought many changes since the excite- 
 ment of 1859, and the colony was now a province 
 of the young Dominion. 
 
 In the annual message of President Grant in the 
 following year the award was hailed with special 
 satisfaction as leaving the two countries for the first 
 time in history without a question of disputed 
 territory on this continent. The remark was prema- 
 ture. It was only shortly after that the boundary 
 between Alaska and the Dominion was called in 
 question, to remain a subject of negotiations until 
 1903. The Behring Sea dispute, moreover, had still 
 to arise and run its fevered course until its settle- 
 ment under the Paris award of 1897. 
 
 It is also to the later years of the rule of Doug- 
 las, and to the history at large of the two colonies, 
 
 283 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 that the wonderful story of Cariboo belongs. The 
 tale has been often told. It is well worthy of 
 telling by the historian of British Columbia, seeing 
 that the Cariboo placers gave permanency, as the 
 Fraser and Thompson diggings had given form, to 
 the mainland colony. The bars of the Fraser, in 
 fact, began to fail within a few months of their 
 discovery. Population had no sooner reached its 
 highest flow than it began to ebb. This was perhaps 
 inevitable from the very magnitude of the move- 
 ment. But into the spirit of the country, already 
 sinking, new vigour was instilled at the magic 
 bidding of gold. To the miners pushing on to the 
 remote and inaccessible headwaters of the Fraser, 
 where in their fancy lay the coarse metal of which 
 the lower diggings held but the sandy effluent, 
 the reward came in a series of finds that opened at 
 once a new era in gold-mining. In the autumn of 
 1859 the first strikes on the Quesnel were reported. 
 Richer and richer discoveries followed, and in six 
 months the famous Cariboo rush of 1860 had 
 begun. The excitement drew upon a much wider 
 field than that of 1858, though it never brought 
 so large and tumultuous an army. From the ends 
 of the earth they came, by sea around Cape Horn, 
 by the Isthmus of Panama (this being the favourite 
 passage), and by caravan across the prairies. From 
 Canada the route lay by Chicago to St. Paul, 
 thence by water to Fort Garry, thence by the trails 
 of the fur traders, a desperately difficult journey, as 
 284 
 
CARIBOO 
 
 the narratives of several parties attest. Rival agen- 
 cies of transport to the diggings fought for the 
 traffic; and frauds upon the ignorant abounded. 
 For five years the inflow, though varying, was 
 constant. Most important of all, the immigrants 
 counted many well fitted by birth and training to 
 give a solid basis to the country which was to be 
 theirs long after every creek of the north had 
 yielded up the lure that first attracted them. 
 
 The region thus forced upon the attention of 
 the world may be roughly described as the high, 
 wooded plateau that lies between the sources of the 
 Fraser and the Thompson and is contained between 
 the upper reaches of these waters as they move to- 
 wards their junction. The Bear, the Willow, the 
 Cottonwood and the Quesnel, radiating from the 
 auriferous slate of the Snowshoe Mountains and 
 falling into the Fraser, are its four great rivers, 
 all alike famous from the wealth of the tributaries 
 on which the diggings of the new field were estab- 
 lished. It will be seen that the district penetrated 
 into the very heart of New Caledonia, where, since 
 the days of Conolly and Douglas, the Hudson’s 
 Bay Company had held the even and prosperous 
 tenor of its way: first under the command of 
 Dease, famous for his discoveries on the Upper 
 Liard and for his Arctic voyages; later under 
 Ogden, wit as well as trader and organizer, and 
 destined, as we have seen, to a larger role in 
 Oregon; and at the last under Manson, who for 
 
 285 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 twelve years of diminishing profits held the reins of 
 power in that most desolate of all the company’s 
 dominions. Needless to add, the rush into the Cari- 
 boo, overflowing soon after to Omineca and Cassiar, 
 sounded the death-knell of the fur trade, already 
 thrust back from the southern districts by the 
 events of the preceding years. 
 
 Apart from their richness, a radical change in 
 the method of working contributed not a little to 
 the success of the Cariboo placers. On the lower 
 Fraser, the rocker and the sluice alone had been 
 employed, and operations were confined almost 
 wholly to the surface. In the Cariboo, deep mining 
 was at once introduced; and by shafts, drifts, pumps- 
 and hoists the gold -laden earth was brought to the 
 surface. So rich was the result that before the end 
 of the second year two million dollars worth of 
 coarse nuggets had been shipped to Victoria by the 
 fifteen hundred miners of the district, and Cariboo 
 had taken a secure place in history by the side of 
 Ballarat and the Sacramento. 
 
 It would be impossible here to trace the steps by 
 which the various camps were opened and the 
 country stripped of its treasure. But the most 
 famous must at least be named. Each creek had a 
 history of its own. Quesnel Forks was the earliest 
 locality to develop into a permanent camp. A party 
 of five with two rockers took out a hundred ounces 
 of gold in a single week, and mining at this point 
 continued for several years. On Cedar and Horsefly 
 286 
 
THE CARIBOO CAMPS 
 
 Creeks, southern tributaries of the Quesnel, several 
 claims, among them the “ Aurora,” yielded equal 
 returns. The movement spread also in 1860 to the 
 Bear River. In January, 1861, came the extra- 
 ordinary finds on Antler Creek, followed in the 
 spring by those on the Harvey, Keithley, Cunning- 
 ham and Grouse, all the latter streams flowing 
 from the north into the Quesnel. The rush now 
 overflowed to the Willow and the Cottonwood. 
 Barkerville sprang up on Williams Creek in the 
 midst of a district fabulously rich, and has since 
 remained the centre of distribution in Cariboo. 
 The Lowhee and Lightning Creek camps followed. 
 In 1862 the number of miners had risen to five 
 thousand and the output to three millions. Both of 
 these totals were exceeded in 1863; but after 1864 
 population and gold alike began to decline. In 
 1867, however, there were still no less than sixty 
 paying claims in operation, and several of the mines 
 continued to produce for many years. In Omineca 
 and Cassiar the excitement did not reach its height 
 until 1871 and had subsided by 1875 ; but in no 
 year were the results so extraordinary as in Cariboo, 
 from which in the first seven years alone an ag- 
 gregate yield of twenty-five millions was taken. 
 The gold occurred chiefly in a deposit of blue clay 
 underlying the beds of the creeks, many of which 
 might literally be said to have been paved with the 
 metal. Individual earnings were astounding. Over 
 one thousand dollars a day were made by many. Six 
 
 287 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 hundred dollars to the single pan were recorded. 
 One party took over seven hundred ounces in two 
 days, and in two months had heaped up a hundred 
 thousand dollars worth of gold. The difficulties were 
 correspondingly enormous. Joined to the inaccessi- 
 bility of the region, the shortness of the season and 
 the terrible severity of the winters, the periodical 
 floods and the depth at which the gold occurred 
 made the workings all but impossible to the aver- 
 age gold-miner. Prices in the early days, when 
 means of transportation in the winter were limited 
 to dog sleds between Alexandria and Antler, rose 
 to an extraordinary level. Flour was $72 per barrel; 
 beans 45 cents per pound ; and bacon 68 cents per 
 pound. To this the end came with the construction 
 of the Cariboo wagon road. On the whole, it is be- 
 lieved that of the army which invaded Cariboo dur- 
 ing 1860-63 one-third returned with nothing, one- 
 third with moderate earnings and the rest with 
 independent fortunes. Terrific feats of endurance 
 were recorded of the men who under the spell of 
 the gold mania struggled against the tangled forests, 
 the yawning canyons and the precipitous mountains 
 covered with snow which made up the region; 
 struggled, too, against the starvation of body and 
 soul that was the miners’ lot, bereft as they were of 
 kindly human intercourse, ruled by the law of the 
 beast, and in the end doomed either to disappoint- 
 ment, or, if success were won, to the folly or 
 viciousness that too often seemed its necessary part. 
 
 288 
 
THE DUAL GOVERNORSHIP 
 
 Truly if the web of that story is of romance, the 
 woof is of tragedy. Yet it was here the colony struck 
 root; and almost every name in its early annals, 
 excepting those of the fur traders, is associated with 
 the stirring history of the gold-fields of Cariboo. 
 
 It was in the year in which the first decline in 
 Cariboo became apparent that the active connection 
 of Douglas with the administration of the two 
 colonies terminated. In the case of Vancouver 
 Island his commission lapsed through the efflux of 
 time in September, 1863. The occasion was marked 
 by popular demonstrations unmistakably sincere; 
 and the crowning honour of his career came in the 
 knighthood conferred upon him by the Queen. He 
 was succeeded by Arthur Kennedy, Esq., who 
 took up the duties of office in the following March. 
 In connection with the retirement of Douglas from 
 the governorship of the mainland colony, which did 
 not occur until 1864, a number of incidents of first 
 importance in the history of the colony require to 
 be mentioned. 
 
 As early as 1861, the dual governorship had 
 caused dissatisfaction in British Columbia. Narrow 
 as was the authority of the assembly of Vancouver 
 Island, it was at least a visible recognition of the 
 people’s inherent right to govern. On the mainland 
 nothing of the sort existed, the governor being the 
 maker, as, with the assistance of the officials sent 
 from England, he was also the administrator, of the 
 
 289 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 laws. Sectional jealousy, especially that of the lead- 
 ing towns, rather than any deeply reasoned wish for 
 similar institutions, led to an agitation, and the 
 feeling eventually took form in a petition which 
 asked among other things for the establishment of 
 a representative assembly. It will be of interest to 
 note what were regarded by the residents of the 
 lower Fraser as the chief grounds for criticism of 
 the manner in which their government was ad- 
 ministered. As described by Douglas himself in 
 his official report on the matter they were as 
 follows : 
 
 1. That the governor, colonial secretary and 
 attorney-general did not reside permanently in 
 British Columbia. 
 
 2. That the taxes on goods were excessive as 
 compared with the population (the latter being es- 
 timated at seven thousand, exclusive of Indians) 
 and were in part levied on boatmen, who derived no 
 benefit from them. The absence of a land tax was 
 also complained of. 
 
 3. That the progress of Victoria was stimulated 
 at the expense of British Columbia, and that no en- 
 couragement was given to shipbuilding, the leading 
 industry of New Westminster, or to the foreign 
 trade of the colony. 
 
 4. That money had been injudiciously spent on 
 public works, and that contracts had been given 
 without public notice, with the result that they 
 were subsequently sublet at a much lower rate. 
 
 290 
 
DISSATISFACTION ON THE MAINLAND 
 
 5. That faulty administration had been made of 
 the public lands, several sections which had been 
 declared public reserves having been afterwards 
 claimed by parties connected with the colonial 
 government. 
 
 6. The want of a registry office for the recording 
 of transfers and mortgages was pointed out. 
 
 The reply of the governor to the first of these 
 complaints was, that he had spared no exertion in 
 his divided duty to promote the interests of both 
 colonies, and that he had not consciously neglected 
 any opportunity of adding to the prosperity of 
 either. As for the other members of the executive, 
 their offices, if confined to British Columbia alone, 
 would be little better than sinecures. The taxation 
 of the colony as compared, for example, with that 
 of the neighbouring state of Washington, was 
 not excessive, and had been spent on roads and 
 public works in a manner that had materially 
 reduced the general cost of living ; moreover the 
 population including Chinamen was ten thousand, 
 or, including Indians (who, inasmuch as they were 
 becoming more and more consumers of imported 
 goods, were entitled to be classed with the other 
 inhabitants), some thirty thousand, so that the rate 
 was £2 per capita instead of £7 10s. as complained 
 of. The remission of duty on shipbuilding material, 
 it was pointed out, would open the door to injustice 
 and discontent, and would do little good to New 
 Westminster as long as the timber business re- 
 
 291 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 mained a monopoly in the hands of a few persons. 
 Clauses four and five were declared to be wholly 
 unfounded. With regard to the final grievance, a 
 measure providing means for the registration of real 
 estate, the governor promised, would be passed at 
 the earliest moment practicable, the delay having 
 arisen only through the peculiar difficulties of the 
 situation. 
 
 On the broad question of the adoption of repre- 
 sentative institutions, Douglas was of the opinion 
 that the fixed population of the colony was too 
 small and of too motley a character to render the 
 experiment feasible. The British residents were few 
 in number ; there was no manufacturing or farming 
 class ; the lumbering and salmon-curing industries 
 which to-day are so important in the Fraser valley 
 had not yet been called into existence ; and the 
 traders who constituted the only body in the colony 
 which was not migratory had comparatively a small 
 interest in its development. As a matter of fact 
 New Westminster had in 1862 only one hundred 
 and sixty-four male adults, Hope but one hundred 
 and eight, and Douglas but thirty-three ; and these 
 were the only centres which had definitely expressed 
 approval of the change. The governor’s avowed in- 
 tention had been to proceed by degrees to the 
 establishment of popular institutions, through the 
 formation of municipal councils to serve as training 
 schools for the people prior to the adoption of the 
 larger idea of a colonial assembly. 
 
 292 
 
VICTORIA 
 
 There was, in fact, a radical difference in the 
 position of the two colonies at this early time of 
 which the discontent on the mainland took too 
 little account. The island had the trades, profes- 
 sions and real estate of its inhabitants on which 
 to levy taxes. British Columbia had its gold alone ; 
 and a duty on the supplies carried inland formed 
 its most obvious means of revenue. The imposition 
 of a tariff had the advantage also of arousing no 
 opposition from the miners, who were the sole 
 support of the colony, and whose requirements 
 in the way of roads rendered a large expendi- 
 ture necessary. A free trade policy, on the other 
 hand, was essential to Victoria, barred as the 
 city was from the mother country by distance and 
 from the United States by a hostile tariff, in order 
 that the British Columbia market at least might 
 fall to her share. She was the centre of population, 
 the seat of trade, the nucleus of colonization, and 
 the chief source of revenue in the British settle- 
 ments of the Pacific ; to maintain this position it 
 was necessary that she should remain the general 
 marketing place of those possessions. The position 
 of the governor, therefore, if it afforded a unique 
 opportunity from the standpoint of the colonies’ in- 
 terests as a whole, was of no ordinary difficulty 
 in view of the opposing policies which it was his 
 duty if possible to reconcile. 
 
 The arguments which Douglas advanced on the 
 occasion of the discontent of 1861 did not ultimate- 
 
 293 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 ly prevail. When the day of his retirement arrived 
 in 1863, the colonial office lost no time in deciding 
 that separate governors for the colonies were a 
 necessity. The decision may have been prompted 
 by the difficulty of securing an officer equal to 
 the task of Douglas; but it was still more largely 
 due to the inherent weakness of the original ar- 
 rangement. So, also, it was resolved that at least 
 the first step towards the adoption of representative 
 institutions must be taken without further delay. 
 The suggestion of Douglas that the end should be 
 reached through the formation of municipal councils 
 was not approved ; but at least it was perceived, 
 though with avowed reluctance, that the approach 
 to an elective assembly must be gradual. The 
 avenue which suggested itself was the organization 
 of a legislative council on a somewhat novel basis. 
 The power of nominating the council was to be 
 vested in the governor; but he was directed at the 
 same time to so exercise that power as to constitute 
 of the council a partially representative body. This 
 end, it was thought, would be secured if one- 
 third of the council was to consist of the executive, 
 one-third of magistrates from different parts of 
 the colony, and the balance of representatives of 
 the people. The plan, it was admitted, did not over- 
 come the difficulties arising out of the migratory 
 nature of the population ; but it was preferred with 
 its imperfections to any untried arrangement. The 
 matter of evolving a working plan for securing the 
 294 
 
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 
 
 popular representation, — whether by ascertaining 
 informally the opinion of the residents in each 
 locality, by bringing the matter before public meet- 
 ings, or (as in Ceylon) by accepting the nominee 
 of certain corporate bodies or societies, — was left 
 to the wisdom of the governor. To inaugurate the 
 scheme an extension of one year’s time was made to 
 the commission of Douglas as governor of British 
 Columbia. 
 
 The fact that the truest interests of the colonies 
 lay in union was not overlooked by the government 
 of Great Britain in advising this arrangement. 
 Economy and efficiency of administration, the de- 
 velopment of political capacity, and the promotion 
 of commerce, called with one voice for solidarity. In 
 salaries alone the saving would have been consider- 
 able. In each, the governor received £ 3 , 01 ) 0 , and 
 the chief-justice £1,200. The colonial secretary re- 
 ceived in Vancouver Island £ 600 , and in British 
 Columbia £800 ; the attorneys-general, £300 and 
 £ 500 , respectively ; the treasurers, £600 and £ 750 , 
 respectively; and the surveyors-general, £500 and 
 £ 800 , respectively. In addition, British Columbia 
 had a collector of customs at £650 ; a chief in- 
 spector of police at £ 500 , and a registrar of deeds 
 at £ 500 . Douglas in a despatch written a few 
 months before the end of his official term strongly 
 advocated union. For the time, however, local pre- 
 judices proved too strong ; and Frederick Seymour, 
 formerly governor of Honduras, was appointed 
 
 295 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 to succeed Sir James in the governorship of British 
 Columbia. 
 
 In a previous chapter the words were given of 
 the address with which Douglas as governor of 
 Vancouver Island opened the first assembly of 
 that colony. The speech with which he greeted the 
 first meeting of a representative body on the main- 
 land, is of no inferior interest as reflecting current 
 opinions and conditions. The date was January 
 21st, 1864. The withholding of popular institutions, 
 he declared, during the infancy of the colony, had 
 been prompted only by regard for its happiness and 
 prosperity. A vigorous prosecution of public works 
 was urged for the purpose of giving value to the 
 waste lands of the colony. F or the increase of popula- 
 tion public lands had been thrown open to settle- 
 ment, and every effort made to promote the de- 
 velopment of the country, though thus far with un- 
 satisfactory results. From the Indians, favourable 
 reports had been received ; reserves based on a 
 maximum allowance of ten acres for each family 
 had been already set aside for them. The opening 
 of postal and telegraphic communications between 
 British Columbia and the head of Lake Superior 
 was foreshadowed. Appropriations for education and 
 religious purposes were recommended, with a dis- 
 claimer added of any desire to see an endowed 
 church in the colony. Finally, the expenditures of 
 the past year, amounting in all to £192,860 (of 
 which £88,937 had been spent on roads and £31,615 
 296 
 
THE UNION OF THE COLONIES 
 
 on civil establishment) were laid before the council. 
 The revenue to meet this was but £110,000 of 
 which over half was derived from customs dues. Of 
 the deficit, £65,805 had been met by loans, a sum 
 which still left £17,055 to be accounted for, besides 
 an additional £10,700 due to the imperial govern- 
 ment for the expenses of the Royal Engineers. For 
 1864, the expenditures were estimated at £107,910 
 and the income at £120,000, though no provision 
 was made in the former for the maintenance of a 
 gold escort or for the erection of further public 
 works. The address concluded with an appeal to 
 the council for advice on this pressing problem of 
 finances. 
 
 It will be of interest to notice before leaving this 
 part of the subject the steps by which the union, 
 after over three years of further intermittent discus- 
 sion, was achieved. In the beginning the movement 
 was confined entirely to Vancouver Island, where 
 by the year 1865 it had gathered not a little force, 
 the assembly voting strongly in its favour and being 
 willing to leave the question of a constitution unre- 
 servedly to the home government. The relations of 
 council and assembly in the island colony had not 
 been altogether happy. There was no medium be- 
 tween the governor and the assembly, and the time 
 of the council was occupied for the most part in 
 correcting the mistakes and undoing the crude 
 legislation of the lower house. The decline of trade 
 
 297 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 which accompanied the exhaustion of the bars of 
 the Fraser, and the fact that the Cariboo mines were 
 never a poor man’s diggings and therefore did not 
 attract more than a comparatively small population, 
 had also led in large part to the dissatisfaction felt 
 in Victoria, where the most of the supplies for the 
 mines were sold. Victoria, moreover, had had no 
 share in the important developments which followed 
 in 1864 the discoveries of the Kootenay district, 
 situated about five hundred miles due east of New 
 Westminster and yielding for a time during the 
 “ Big Bend ” rush, a total revenue to the public 
 treasury of not less than £1,000 a week. The entire 
 supplies for these were secured by the way of New 
 Westminster or the Columbia. The mines even 
 attracted many from Victoria’s best customer, 
 Cariboo. 
 
 On the other hand there were several reasons 
 w r hy the mainland colony should for the time look 
 askance upon the idea of union. The year 1865 was 
 one of exceptional progress in the opening up of the 
 country. The trail from the Fraser to Kootenay, 
 surmounting three ranges of mountains and not 
 only affording access to the mines but establishing a 
 new route through the Kootenay pass from the Pa- 
 cific to the Hudson’s Bay lands beyond the moun- 
 tains, was in itself a work which might well infuse 
 self-confidence even into a struggling colony. By the 
 end of 1865 New Westminster was connected with 
 the whole telegraphic system of the United States, 
 298 
 
TERMS OF THE UNION 
 
 Canada and Newfoundland, and with Cariboo. The 
 constitution of 1863 had been successfully placed in 
 operation, the popular candidates being elected at 
 public meetings called by the magistrates. But the 
 real opposition to union lay in the rivalry of Victoria 
 and New Westminster for the honour of being 
 chosen as the capital, and the fear which the latter 
 had of being supplanted by the older, wealthier and 
 more influential community. Being almost the sole 
 municipality which found a voice, New Westmin- 
 ster was able for some time to combat successfully 
 all agitation for union. The upper country cared 
 little whether the colonies were one or separate. 
 But on the lower Fraser it came at last to be felt 
 that the uncertainty was interfering seriously with 
 progress. 
 
 In 1866, a petition in favour of union was signed 
 by four hundred and forty-five persons, and there 
 was probably a much wider feeling had it been able 
 to make itself heard. In the end the British govern- 
 ment decided the question, and the authority of 
 the executive government and council of British 
 Columbia was extended over Vancouver Island, the 
 number of members of the council being increased 
 to twenty-three. The customs regulations of the 
 mainland colony were likewise extended to the 
 island. Other ordinances remained for a time as be- 
 fore. The original authority of the governor to make 
 regulations for peace, order and good government 
 was not restricted. The Act bore date of August 
 
 299 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 6th, 1866. A short time after, the attorney-general 
 of Vancouver Island introduced a bill for assimilat- 
 ing its laws with those of British Columbia. There 
 then remained only the question of the seat of 
 government — a rock which the Act of union had 
 discreetly avoided. Amid the violent altercations of 
 partisans, the choice fell on Victoria, and though 
 the bitterness of the defeat rankled long on the 
 mainland no effort subsequently availed to secure a 
 reversion of the decision. 
 
 The foregoing outline of the process by which 
 British Columbia, as we know it to-day, attained 
 its united form, has gone somewhat beyond the 
 time when the man who had brought order out of 
 the chaos and had been the chief agent in shaping 
 the progress of the colony in the course it has since 
 pursued, laid down the direction of its affairs. With 
 the setting in active motion of the forces which re- 
 sulted in union, Sir James Douglas passed from the 
 scene. It is a moment of solemnity, for communi- 
 ties as for individuals, when the past is cast off for- 
 ever. How large a part was Douglas of all that had 
 happened since the birth of the two colonies has 
 been sufficiently shown. But there was an added 
 reason why his retirement at this time was of no 
 ordinary significance, little though the change was 
 ♦ marked by outward or immediate results. The 
 spirit of that old time force, the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company, which had been the first to conquer the 
 300 
 
RETIREMENT OF DOUGLAS 
 
 tremendous barriers by which nature has divided 
 the Pacific slope from the rest of the continent, 
 which had subdued the intractable native, and had 
 opened the first pathway for civilization to the 
 western ocean, lived and breathed in Sir James 
 Douglas. It died only with his passing. The change 
 was for better things, as the future was soon to 
 show, but that this was possible is a tribute to 
 the wisdom with which the foundations had been 
 laid. 
 
 It is left to treat of the remaining years of 
 Douglas and to estimate the value of his work 
 and personality in the founding of British Col- 
 umbia. In connection with that task it will be 
 well to note in very brief review the leading 
 features of the later history of the colony, especially 
 those that have their visible root in the era of 
 colonial administration, in order the better to ap- 
 preciate the nature of that early planting from 
 which the present fruitful harvest has sprung. 
 
 301 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONFEDERATION 
 
 FTER toil, — rest. Long before the period of 
 
 his commissions had expired, Douglas had 
 made up his mind : his public connection with the 
 colonies must cease. No one was more conscious 
 than he that his day of greatest usefulness was past, 
 and that his present office, if continued, would be 
 one only of increasing difficulties. For a place in the 
 new regime he had no inclination. Accustomed as 
 he had been to untrammelled rule, he could play 
 no part in the turmoil of reconstruction and divided 
 power which was now approaching, and which was 
 still to last for several years before the people of 
 British Columbia achieved entire control of their 
 administration. 
 
 The retirement of Sir James Douglas from the 
 governorship of the two colonies was marked by all 
 those forms and ceremonies with which the man of 
 public affairs is wont to pass from the scene of his 
 activity, and which may mean much or little. There 
 had undoubtedly arisen a deep-rooted opposition to 
 the principle of irresponsible government in British 
 Columbia and to Douglas as the representative of 
 that principle. Y et in the mass of customary lauda- 
 tion with which his days of office closed, the note of 
 gratitude for the unequalled experience which he 
 
 303 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 had brought to the service of the country and for 
 the value of the work he had done was persistently 
 present, even in the minds of those who realized 
 most clearly the necessity for change. There were 
 banquets and processions, presentations of me- 
 morials and tributes of the press. The formula was 
 repeated in the respective capitals of the colonies. 
 At Victoria, two hundred of the leading citizens of 
 Vancouver Island took their seats at a dinner 
 in his honour; in New Westminster, where settle- 
 ment was less compact, seventy-five. Both colonies 
 presented addresses signed by hundreds of their 
 inhabitants to the Duke of Newcastle, colonial 
 secretary, in which admiration of the governor 
 was warmly expressed. The legislature of Vancou- 
 ver Island declared its belief that the signal pros- 
 perity which the colony had enjoyed was “mainly 
 ascribable to the policy which His Excellency in- 
 augurated,” the governor characteristically reply- 
 ing with an exhortation to harmony between the 
 executive and the legislature. So, likewise, the 
 council of Vancouver Island placed on record its 
 high estimation of the policy of Douglas “in origi- 
 nating and administering the government” of the 
 colony, of his appreciation of his duties and re- 
 sponsibilities, and of the moral qualities which had 
 adorned his actions and endeared him to the people 
 of the island. In Victoria, the universal respect in 
 which the governor was held had kindled into an 
 affection which was plainly manifest in the demon- 
 304 
 
ADDRESSES OF FAREWELL 
 
 strations with which his departure was accompan- 
 ied. Twenty-two years from the time that the 
 natives of Camosun first saw the harbour ruffled 
 by the Beaver , Douglas passed through the streets 
 of the city he had founded on his last official 
 progress, the people thronging the way and crowd- 
 ing to grasp his hand as the guns of the fort pealed 
 their farewell salute. On the mainland, where he 
 was at one time regarded as the natural enemy of 
 the colony, it is of significance to quote the follow- 
 ing from an address which was presented at New 
 Westminster and which bore the names of over 
 nine hundred of the inhabitants : 
 
 “ During the period His Excellency has been in 
 office, he has assiduously devoted his remarkable 
 talents to the good of the country; ever unmindful 
 of self, he has been accessible to all, and we firmly 
 believe that no man could have had a higher appre- 
 ciation of the sacred trust vested in him, and none 
 could have more faithfully and nobly discharged it 
 than he has. 
 
 “The great road system which Governor Douglas 
 has introduced into the colony is an imperishable 
 monument of his judgment and foresight. It has al- 
 ready rendered his name dear to every miner, and 
 future colonists will wonder how so much could have 
 been accomplished with such small means. The col- 
 ony already feels the benefit resulting from his un- 
 wavering policy in this respect, and year by year will 
 the wisdom of that policy become more manifest. 
 
 305 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 “ During his term of office the laws have ever 
 been rigidly, faithfully and impartially adminis- 
 tered; the poorest man has always felt that in a 
 just cause he would not have to seek redress in 
 vain, and the country has in consequence enjoyed 
 a remarkable exemption from crime and disturb- 
 ance.” 
 
 It was in reply to this that Douglas uttered 
 the words that sum up, better than any other of 
 his own that have survived, the total of his en- 
 deavour as governor: “ This is surely the voice 
 and heart of British Columbia. Here are no spe- 
 cious phrases, no hollow or venal compliments. This 
 speaks out broadly, and honestly, and manfully. It 
 assures me that my administration has been useful; 
 that I have done my duty faithfully; that I have 
 used the power of my sovereign for good, and not 
 for evil; that I have wronged no man, oppressed 
 no man; but that I have, with upright rule, meted 
 out equal-handed justice to all.” 
 
 Among the most persistent opponents of the 
 administration of Douglas was Amor de Cosmos, 
 founder and editor of the Victoria Colonist. Few 
 names in western history are more widely known. 
 Beneath the eccentricity which was his most marked 
 outward characteristic, and of which the changing 
 of his name in that wild and free society was a 
 conspicuous example, lay a genuine public spirit and 
 a dogged resolution in resisting what he deemed 
 to be abuses. Born in Nova Scotia, where the fight 
 306 
 
AMOR DE COSMOS 
 
 for responsible government was early fought and 
 won, and by nature combative to a degree, he 
 found in the form of administration existing in 
 British Columbia, a condition which kindled within 
 him all that fierceness of political invective of 
 which he was the accomplished master. Here was 
 not only government without a legislature and 
 without a ministry, but government by a man as 
 autocratic by instinct and training as by the ordin- 
 ance from which his power was derived. To de Cos- 
 mos, not free from opportunism and seeking now 
 the pathway to his own future, Douglas was the 
 mere embodiment of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 
 influence carried forward into an era in which it had 
 no place, and in which it could work only for evil. 
 From the embittered warfare waged daily in the 
 columns of the Colonist , an organized party took 
 form in opposition to every act of the governor, 
 an opposition which was soon extended to the 
 mainland, and which was silenced only with the 
 inauguration of popular government in 1871. 
 Among the friends of the retiring governor, de 
 Cosmos, therefore, could not be reckoned. His 
 tribute, accordingly, to the personal worth of 
 Douglas was of no ordinary value when in the 
 Colonist of October 13th, 1863, he wrote as 
 follows: — 
 
 “We have conceived it our duty, upon some 
 occasions, to differ from the policy pursued by 
 Mr. Douglas, as governor of this colony, and we 
 
 307 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 have, from time to time had occasion, as public 
 journalists, to oppose that policy: we trust, how- 
 ever, that such opposition has at no time been 
 factious — personal to the governor himself it has 
 never been. If we have opposed the measures of 
 government, we have never, in our criticism of 
 the public acts of the executive head of that 
 government, failed in our esteem for the sterling 
 honesty of purpose which has guided those acts, 
 nor for the manly and noble qualities and virtues 
 which adorn the man. The intimate relations which 
 have so long existed between Sir James Douglas 
 and the people of Victoria will shortly undergo a 
 change, and we are quite sure that we echo the 
 sentiments of the public of Victoria in saying that 
 His Excellency will carry into private life the 
 honest esteem and hearty good wishes of all Van- 
 couver. His services to his country as governor of 
 these colonies will not be forgotten for many years 
 to come.” 
 
 It may be of interest to mention here that from 
 1863 until 1866 the desire for the annexation of the 
 colonies outrode all other sentiments in Vancouver 
 Island, and that de Cosmos himself was among the 
 most persistent advocates of unconditional union, 
 notwithstanding that the change involved for 
 the time the acceptance of administration by the 
 Crown. 
 
 The ceremonies of leaving office ended, Douglas 
 was free to carry out the dream of many years — a 
 308 
 
VISIT TO EUROPE 
 
 voyage to Europe. There is little of public interest 
 in the journey; but a diary in which he kept a daily 
 record of his movements and impressions throws a 
 singularly valuable light upon his tastes and sym- 
 pathies, the variety of his information, and many 
 of his views on public affairs. Conspicuous through- 
 out are his affection for his family, the fervour of 
 his religious convictions, the characteristic love of a 
 Scotchman for his native country, and the wide 
 range of subjects in which he had an interest. Leav- 
 ing Esquimalt in May, he sailed by way of Panama 
 for Southampton, the voyage as he covered it ex- 
 ceeding ninety-six hundred miles. The summer and 
 early autumn were spent in England and Scotland, 
 where he visited one of his daughters in the vicinity 
 of Inverness, and the rest of the year in France, 
 Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The 
 south of France, Spain and Italy were visited in 
 the opening months of the following year. In 
 March he was in Rome, where the first attack of 
 an illness which was to give him much anxiety 
 was recorded. His active life in the open and 
 his severely regular habits had hitherto made dis- 
 ease unknown to him; the derangement of the 
 heart to which he finally fell a victim was con- 
 stitutional or perhaps induced by the strenuous 
 early life of the fur traders, many of whom though 
 vigorous in the extreme failed to reach old age. 
 But the mind of Douglas, even in Italy, was never 
 far away from the land to which he had given his 
 
 309 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 life. At Villetri, near Rome, on the 6th of March, 
 he sees “rocky land covered with brush, places 
 which recall the narrow little vales between the 
 ridges of W ork’s farm near Victoria ” ; and again, 
 “a cloudy sky, a short sprinkling of rain, the low 
 springing grass, the damp earth and the brave little 
 daisy are not unlike early March scenes in Vic- 
 toria.” From Italy he passed again through Ger- 
 many to Paris where the news of the death of a 
 daughter plunged him in deep affliction. From 
 France he returned to London and in a few 
 months more had arrived at Victoria, no longer 
 to bear an active part in public affairs. 
 
 The rest of the life of Douglas was unevent- 
 ful. In the management of his private fortune, 
 in constant reading, and in the out-door exercises 
 that had been his passion during the busiest part 
 of his career, the days went by. He died on 
 August 1st, 1877. The end came suddenly, though 
 not without premonition, from heart failure. The 
 funeral was a notable event in the history of the 
 province. Especially striking were the tributes of 
 the Indians to whom he was indeed the friend 
 they held him. His wife was laid by his side in 
 1891. 
 
 Before the day of his passing, Douglas had lived 
 long enough to witness not a little of the growth 
 which sprang directly from his sowing, and at least 
 the promise of that greater fruitage which the future 
 310 
 
CONFEDERATION 
 
 was to yield. It will be well, before attempting any 
 final estimate of the man and his work, to turn for 
 a moment to the more important of the develop- 
 ments that followed his retirement from public life 
 and to the general course of progress since in 
 British Columbia. 
 
 On December 17th, 1867, the legislature of 
 British Columbia assembled for the first time at 
 Victoria. The influence of Seymour, who had suc- 
 ceeded to the governorship of the united colonies, 
 had hitherto retained for New Westminster this 
 coveted distinction. Having yielded in one matter, 
 the governor and the opinion which he represented 
 saw fit to bow to the majority in another and more 
 important. No sooner had the confederation of the 
 eastern colonies become an accomplished fact, than 
 the admission of British Columbia to the Dominion 
 of Canada was keenly debated. The governor op- 
 posed it. A small party which favoured annexation 
 with the United States opposed it. The body of 
 office-holders opposed it vigorously. At the first, 
 the activity of these succeeded in shelving the 
 question. Nevertheless, as early as March, 1868, a 
 resolution passed the council in favour of the union, 
 provided fair and equitable terms could be obtain- 
 ed. Public meetings at Victoria, Barkerville and 
 other points, soon after gave solid endorsation to 
 the project. The sympathy of the Dominion itself 
 was obtained, with special reference to the taking 
 over of the intervening territory. A confederation 
 
 311 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 league was formed and a convention held under its 
 auspices at Yale. Here, perhaps for the first time, 
 the movement found its full voice, the existing 
 form of government being denounced as a despot- 
 ism for which the only remedy was asserted to be 
 the immediate admission of British Columbia into 
 the Dominion and the establishment of responsible 
 institutions. 
 
 But the most potent of all the arguments for 
 union was the promise which it held out of pro- 
 moting overland communication with Canada. This 
 it was that finally silenced the opposition of Sey- 
 mour. In any event, the death of the governor in 
 1869 led to the appointment of an avowed advo- 
 cate of confederation, Anthony Musgrave, pre- 
 viously governor of Newfoundland, and with an 
 experience of administration gained in the West 
 Indies. A tour of the colony which the new 
 officer immediately undertook confirmed the view 
 that the overwhelming sentiment of the popu- 
 lation was in favour of confederation. On the 
 back of this came formal instructions from Eng- 
 land that the governor should take such steps as 
 he properly and constitutionally could, either in 
 conjunction with the governor-general of Canada 
 or otherwise, to promote the favourable considera- 
 tion of the question. When the council, which had 
 been reconstituted in 1869, met for the session of 
 1870, Musgrave had a series of resolutions pre- 
 pared for its consideration. In a memorable debate 
 312 
 
TERMS OF THE UNION 
 
 which began on March 9th, 1870, and lasted until 
 the twenty-fifth, the terms on which British Colum- 
 bia should become a part of the Dominion were 
 definitely determined. On July 7th, the news was 
 received from Ottawa that the articles had been 
 agreed upon, the construction of the transcon- 
 tinental railway guaranteed, and the delegates who 
 had been sent to present the claims of the province 
 already on their way home. 
 
 The provisions upon which British Columbia en- 
 tered confederation ensured in the first place that 
 the Dominion should assume all debts and liabili- 
 ties of the colony, allowance being made for the 
 small amount of these compared with the original 
 indebtedness of the other provinces. For the sup- 
 port of the provincial government an annual sub- 
 sidy of thirty-five thousand dollars, with an ad- 
 ditional grant of eighty cents per head on an esti- 
 mated population of sixty thousand was promised, 
 the latter allowance to be increased pro rata until 
 the population reached four hundred thousand. Can- 
 ada was to defray all charges in respect to the sal- 
 aries of the lieutenant-governor and of the judges of 
 the Superior and County or District Courts — like- 
 wise of the department of customs, the postal and 
 telegraph services, the fisheries, the militia, the geo- 
 logical survey, the penitentiary, the marine depart- 
 ment, the care of the Indians and other matters ap- 
 pertaining to the general government. A fortnight- 
 ly steam mail service between Victoria and San 
 
 313 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Francisco, and a weekly service with Olympia, 
 were to be maintained by the Dominion. But the 
 portion of the agreement which was of most 
 absorbing interest to British Columbia, was that 
 which set forth in detail the terms on which the 
 railway across the continent, now the dream of 
 every section of the community, should be built, 
 and which provided in brief that it should unite 
 the seaboard of British Columbia with the railway 
 system of Canada and that its construction should 
 be begun within two years of the date of union, 
 the province conveying the necessary public lands 
 along the line in trust to the Dominion govern- 
 ment. The Dominion also guaranteed the interest 
 for ten years on a maximum sum of £100,000 to 
 be expended on the construction of a graving dock 
 at Esquimalt. The new province was given three 
 seats in the senate and six in the House of Com- 
 mons. Finally, it was agreed that the constitution 
 of the executive authority and of the legislature of 
 British Columbia should continue until altered 
 under the British North America Act, it being 
 understood that the Dominion government would 
 consent to the introduction of responsible govern- 
 ment when desired by the people of British Co- 
 lumbia, and that it was the intention of the British 
 Columbia government to amend the existing con- 
 stitution of the legislature by providing that a 
 majority of its members should be elective. The 
 union was to take place on a date to be fixed by 
 314 
 
REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS 
 
 Her Majesty on addresses from the legislature 
 of British Columbia and of the parliament of 
 Canada, the former being granted leave to specify 
 in its address the electoral districts for which the 
 first election of members to serve in the House of 
 Commons should take place. 
 
 The document containing the terms of union 
 reached Victoria on July 18th, 1870. Meantime a 
 representative had been despatched to England to 
 secure the needed change in the constitution of the 
 colony and the guarantee of the imperial govern- 
 ment for the completion of the Canadian Pacific 
 Railway. For the election of the new council, 
 which for the first time in the history of the 
 united colonies was preponderatingly representa- 
 tive in character, the colony was divided into eight 
 electoral districts, consisting of Victoria City, Vic- 
 toria district, Nanaimo, New Westminster, Hope, 
 Yale and Lytton, Lillooet and Clinton, and Cariboo 
 and Kootenay. Of these, Victoria city returned two 
 members. The elections were held in November, 
 and the council met in January, 1871. The chief 
 work of the session was, of course, the ratification 
 of the terms of union previously agreed upon. This 
 done, an Act was passed abolishing the council and 
 establishing a legislative assembly in its stead, the 
 latter to be elected once in every four years and to 
 consist of twenty-four members chosen by twelve 
 electoral districts. Thus it was effected that respon- 
 sible government should come into operation at the 
 
 815 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 first session of the legislature subsequent to the 
 union with Canada. A Qualification and Franchise 
 Act was passed and the council prorogued on 
 March 28th. On the same date, the resolutions for 
 the admission of the colony were moved in the 
 Canadian House of Commons, and, after a four 
 days’ discussion, were adopted. On July 1st, 1871, 
 the first Dominion Day was celebrated in British 
 Columbia. 
 
 On the whole, the new province brought to the 
 Dominion a dower of no ordinary richness in the 
 way of accomplished development and of promising 
 outlook for the future. From the lavish expen- 
 ditures of the early years a system of retrenchment 
 and economy had been evolved, while the perman- 
 ent results of these expenditures remained. Roads 
 had been opened. Agriculture had been planted ; 
 it was estimated that not less than one hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand acres, valued at from two 
 dollars and a half to five dollars per acre, were avail- 
 able for cultivation. The mining industry of the 
 province was already famous throughout the world, 
 while it was known that not a tithe of its richness 
 had been revealed. Even manufactures were as- 
 suming importance. Trade had reached a volume of 
 over $3,400,000 a year. The labour market was in a 
 promising condition, unskilled workmen being in 
 good demand at wages of two dollars and a half 
 per day and upward. The Indian question had been 
 placed on a satisfactory basis. The Hon. J. W. 
 
 316 
 
THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY 
 
 Trutch, distinguished for many years past in the 
 councils of the colony, became the first lieutenant- 
 governor, under auspices that promised to the mind 
 of every inhabitant the beginning of a golden era 
 for the province. 
 
 But the union could not be real to British Col- 
 umbia until the railway — the tie on which so much 
 depended — was at least in visible process of realiza- 
 tion. In this, a grievous disappointment awaited 
 the province. For a decade and a half the delay in 
 the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was 
 the leading topic in political, industrial and com- 
 mercial circles throughout British Columbia. A re- 
 ference to this phase in the development of the 
 province is necessary to complete the record of 
 confederation. 
 
 As early as 1858, when the discovery of the gold- 
 fields of the Fraser made the value of the country 
 known, the ambition of Great Britain to see planted 
 a chain of colonies which should cross the contin- 
 ent, bound by a single chain of railways, from Nova 
 Scotia to the Pacific, was formally acknowledged. 
 For ten years more, however, the enormous difficul- 
 ties, both of finance and of engineering, prevented 
 serious consideration of the project, and it was not 
 until the explorations of Viscount Milton in the 
 Rocky Mountains and the unceasing agitation of 
 Mr. Alfred Waddington had awakened public in- 
 terest, that the undertaking may be said to have 
 
 317 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 been brought within the realm even of the re- 
 motely practicable. In September, 1869, the Can- 
 ada Gazette contained a notice that application 
 would be made at the ensuing session of parliament 
 for a charter to build a railway from the Canadian 
 system to the foot of the Rockies; but this was 
 later acknowledged to have been only a part of 
 the campaign for the creation of an intelligent 
 public opinion on the subject. By 1870, however, 
 such measures were no longer necessary, the desir- 
 ability of the railway being no longer questioned, 
 and the proposition for its construction having 
 been accepted, in the way that has been described, 
 as an integral part of the bargain between British 
 Columbia and the Dominion. The line, it had 
 already come to be recognized, was almost as 
 necessary to the one as to the other; for if British 
 Columbia was thought to profit more immediately 
 by its construction, and in the discussions on the 
 subject bore always the aggressive part, an outlet 
 to the unoccupied territory of the West was no 
 less an urgent need to Canada if she was to prevent 
 her surplus population from continually overflowing 
 into the United States, and if in process of time 
 she was to be assured of an expanding market for 
 her produce. 
 
 But the signing of the articles of union did not 
 by any means allay the almost universal feeling of 
 distrust, not to say of alarm, with which the project 
 had been regarded from the first in Canada. To the 
 318 
 
DELAY IN CONSTRUCTION 
 
 majority it seemed indeed that the Dominion had 
 essayed a task that was impossible. The feeling 
 was reflected in parliament where, in spite of the 
 strength of the government of the day, the con- 
 federation measure passed with difficulty and only 
 on the promise that the undertaking would be 
 left to private enterprise without involving further 
 additions to the taxation of the country. This in 
 itself was a blow to the expectations of the people 
 of British Columbia; for it was clear that the 
 enormous expenses of construction and the scanty 
 earnings that could be counted upon for many 
 years in the service of so small and scattered a 
 population would prove but an indifferent attrac- 
 tion to capital. As a matter of fact, the limit 
 specified at confederation for the beginning of the 
 work, July 1st, 1873, expired before even the sur- 
 veys had been more than started. 
 
 The tangled skein of the dispute which forthwith 
 arose between the province and the Dominion, it is 
 unnecessary here to unravel. Throughout its con- 
 tinuance no real desire was apparent on the part of 
 British Columbia, if we pierce below the surface, to 
 exact the full legal penalty of a compact proved by 
 time and circumstances to be unjust. She had been 
 led, however, to regard the railway as the chief con- 
 dition of the union, and the railway she was deter- 
 mined should be built. If her attitude was local 
 and colonial rather than federal and Canadian, it 
 must be remembered that her assimilation with 
 
 319 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the Dominion was the very point at issue. The 
 charge of breach of faith preferred by the province 
 was the subject of prolonged negotiations. After a 
 lengthy war by correspondence, Mr. J. D. Edgar, 
 afterwards Sir James Edgar, was despatched in the 
 spring of 1874 as a special agent of the Dominion 
 to Victoria. The result was but to bring the differ- 
 ences to a head, in the form of an appeal by the 
 province to the British government. The construc- 
 tion of two rival lines, the Northern and the Union 
 Pacific, in the United States, added fuel to the 
 discontent. The award which followed, known as 
 the Carnarvon terms, was distinctly favourable to 
 British Columbia, in so far that it ensured the 
 building of the road, though it recognized that 
 the letter of the original agreement could not pos- 
 sibly be carried out. The award required that two 
 million dollars should be spent each year on the 
 construction of the road within the province from 
 the time the surveys w'ere completed, the latter 
 to be pushed at once with all possible vigour; that 
 the railway should be completed and opened for 
 traffic between Lake Superior and the Pacific sea- 
 board on or before December 31st, 1890; and that 
 a telegraph line and certain wagon roads should 
 be constructed forthwith. 
 
 At the outset, it should be stated, an Act had 
 passed the Dominion parliament granting a subsidy 
 of thirty million dollars together with fifty million 
 acres of land for the construction of a railway 
 320 
 
THE CARNARVON TERMS 
 
 from Lake Nipissing to the Pacific, and a charter 
 had been awarded to a company organized under 
 the leadership of Sir Hugh Allan. The episode 
 familiarly known as the Pacific scandal had fol- 
 lowed, and the company, finding it impossible to 
 raise the needed capital, went out of existence. 
 Mackenzie, on succeeding to the chaos which fol- 
 lowed the resignation of Sir John Macdonald’s 
 ministry, having failed in the attempt to treat 
 directly with the provincial authorities and having 
 sought in vain to purchase calm by the passage of 
 a new Pacific Railway Bill in 1874, found even in 
 the terms of the Carnarvon settlement an unex- 
 pected difficulty. In addition to the provisions 
 referred to, the award required the construction by 
 the Dominion with all possible despatch of a line 
 from Esquimalt to Nanaimo, the building of this 
 road having been offered by the previous govern- 
 ment to the province by way of offset for the 
 delay which had occurred in the carrying out 
 of the terms of the union. A bill which incor- 
 porated this feature of the award was passed by 
 the House of Commons, but was rejected by the 
 senate on the ground that the terms of union 
 did not call for any extension of the line to Van- 
 couver Island, and that, if the extension were 
 considered in the light of compensation, it was on 
 altogether too extravagant a scale. The entire 
 question was thus thrown open anew to discus- 
 sion, and the negotiations which ensued served 
 
 321 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 but to widen the breach between the govern- 
 ments. 
 
 From the standpoint of British Columbia, the 
 attitude of the Dominion was now in open disre- 
 gard of the Carnarvon terms, as it had previously- 
 been at variance with the articles of union. By 
 1876, neither the mainland nor the island road had 
 been begun, nor had the agreement relating to the 
 provincial section of the telegraph been carried 
 out, nor had a commencement been made of the 
 wagon road intended to facilitate the work of con- 
 struction proper. Widespread depression in trade, 
 it was claimed, had followed these delays, and the 
 development of the country had been greatly re- 
 tarded. On the other hand, the Mackenzie govern- 
 ment now protested vigorously against the selec- 
 tion, agreed to by its predecessor, of Esquimalt as 
 the terminus, a choice involving an expenditure of 
 seven millions and a half on Vancouver Island, 
 with a bridge across the narrows estimated to cost 
 twenty millions more. It was willing to offer 
 seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or about 
 seventy- five dollars per capita of the white popu- 
 lation of the province, as indemnity for the de- 
 lay; but this had been refused. Moreover, during 
 the first four years of union, the Dominion had 
 expended in British Columbia twelve hundred 
 thousand dollars more than had been derived from 
 the province in revenue, though undoubtedly a 
 large portion of this was incidental merely to 
 322 
 
AN ARRANGEMENT REACHED 
 
 the extension of confederation over the new ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 While the controversy continued thus, with 
 secession openly in prospect, Lord DufFerin, the 
 governor-general of Canada, paid a visit to the 
 new province, which, while failing of its avowed 
 object of reconciling the discordant elements, suc- 
 ceeded through his tact and adroitness in allay- 
 ing much of the irritation with which the sub- 
 ject had by this time come to be associated and 
 which in itself formed no small obstacle to an 
 agreement. Nevertheless, for two years longer, 
 though the surveys were actively prosecuted, not 
 only was nothing done on the actual construction 
 of the line, but tenders were not even invited. In 
 September, 1878, accordingly, a formal threat of 
 separation was made by the British Columbia 
 legislature. Annexation with the United States 
 again became a subject of discussion in certain 
 quarters ; and there was general discontent and de- 
 moralization. On the change of ministry at Ottawa, 
 however, more conciliatory counsels were adopted; 
 surveys were rapidly completed; Port Moody on 
 Burrard Inlet was finally selected as the terminus; 
 and by 1880 all was in readiness for the fulfilment 
 of the railway clauses of the union. This had its 
 due effect in British Columbia. In 1881, the con- 
 veyance of twenty miles on either side of the line 
 to the Dominion was authorized, and with the 
 passing, on March 25th, of an Act providing 
 
 323 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 that the Supreme Court of Canada and the Ex- 
 chequer Court or the Supreme Court of Canada 
 alone (according to the provisions of the Act of 
 Parliament of Canada known as the Supreme 
 and Exchequer Court Act) should have jurisdic- 
 tion in controversies between the Dominion and 
 the province, the actual union of the province and 
 the Dominion may be said to have been consum- 
 mated. The province continued to press in London 
 for permission to collect its own tariff of customs 
 and excise until through communication should 
 be established with the eastern provinces; but the 
 plea fell now on deaf ears and after a brief agitation 
 was allowed to die. 
 
 From this time forward the railway made rapid 
 progress. It had been decided, in 1878, that the 
 route should follow the valleys of the Fraser and the 
 Thompson. By 1880, when some sixteen and a half 
 millions had been expended on surveys and con- 
 struction as a whole, Sir John Macdonald an- 
 nounced the formation of a syndicate by whom the 
 work would be completed. The Dominion, under 
 the contract, agreed to build the portion of the road 
 between Yale and Kamloops by the end of June, 
 1885, and that between Port Moody and Yale 
 by June 1st, 1891. All was finally laid at rest 
 between the governments by the Settlement Act 
 of 1884. 
 
 Of the various terms of the agreement and of 
 the manner in which its provisions were carried 
 324 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF CONSTRUCTION 
 
 out in the sections east of the Rocky Mountains, 
 no further mention is necessary here. Of the work 
 within the boundaries of British Columbia, how- 
 ever, the completion of which may be said to have 
 marked an epoch in railway construction as well as 
 in the history of the province, the more extraordin- 
 ary features may be noted. Between Kamloops 
 Lake and Burrard Inlet, where the road descends 
 the canyons of the Thompson and Fraser, the 
 contracts were undertaken at a cost approximat- 
 ing twelve million dollars, apart from rails and 
 fastenings. Ground was broken early in 1880. On 
 portions of the road it is probable that the difficul- 
 ties were greater than had ever before been encoun- 
 tered in railway building, except perhaps in Swit- 
 zerland and Peru. The cost per mile over a con- 
 siderable section averaged eighty thousand dollars ; 
 in certain parts as much as two hundred thousand 
 dollars per mile was expended. In nineteen miles 
 near Yale, thirteen tunnels occur. Elsewhere in the 
 Fraser canyons the roadway was literally hewn 
 from the rock, men being lowered hundreds of feet 
 down the face of the precipice to blast a foothold. 
 At times over seven thousand labourers were em- 
 ployed, though the average was nearer four thous- 
 and. The enormous difficulties of forwarding sup- 
 plies and material were overcome with no less 
 marvellous skill. Even the rapids of the Fraser 
 were breasted by a steamer built for the purpose. 
 In the section of the railway which traverses the 
 
 325 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Rocky Mountains, scarcely less astounding feats 
 of engineering were required. By 1884, the track 
 had been laid from Winnipeg to the summit of 
 the Rockies, though there was still a gap of two 
 hundred miles between that point and Kamloops. 
 But the end was soon to crown the work. On Nov- 
 ember 7th, 1885, five years before the date required 
 by the Carnarvon terms, the final rail was laid. 
 The last spike was driven by Mr. Donald A. Smith, 
 now Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, a leading 
 director of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, 
 and, by a fitting coincidence, the chief representa- 
 tive of the great fur-trading enterprise whose men 
 had been the first to enter the Pacific slope. It was 
 a grave moment in the history of Canada and the 
 British Empire. Henceforward east was west and 
 west was east in British North America, as nearly 
 as the hand of man could accomplish it. The gate- 
 way to the Orient had been opened at last by land. 
 How, on commercial grounds alone — though these 
 were not its basis — the undertaking begun amid so 
 many doubts and fears has justified the vision of 
 its founders, is among the trite lessons of our his- 
 tory. In the creation of the prosperous city of Van- 
 couver, to-day one of the leading centres of industry 
 in Canada, entrepot of a trade that reaches to the 
 ends of the earth, with clearings of over two hun- 
 dred million dollars, employing a tonnage of nearly 
 thirteen millions, and already numbering over sev- 
 enty thousand inhabitants, where a quarter of a 
 326 
 
RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT 
 
 century ago was virgin forest, may be seen a typical 
 instance of what that great enterprise has accom- 
 plished for the province and for Canada. 
 
 It will be of interest to notice here the further 
 steps that have been taken to open up the prov- 
 ince by means of railways. That Port Moody 
 was selected by the Dominion as the terminus of 
 the Canadian Pacific Railway largely because it 
 rendered unnecessary the construction of the Es- 
 quimalt and Nanaimo line as a condition of the 
 union with British Columbia, there can be no 
 doubt. The effect was long felt by Victoria and 
 Vancouver Island. In 1883, however, a contract 
 was entered into with another agency for the con- 
 struction of the line in question, the work to be 
 begun at once and to be finished by 1887. Thus, 
 with only a slight delay, the island was provided 
 with a railway throughout its most thickly peopled 
 districts, and the line by a recent purchase forms 
 part of the system of the Canadian Pacific. Even 
 before the projection of this undertaking, the New 
 Westminster and Port Moody, the Fraser River, 
 and the Columbia and Kootenay Railway Com- 
 panies, had been incorporated. The last, which 
 provided entrance to the Kootenay district from 
 the north, became in time a part of the important 
 system built westward by the Canadian Pacific 
 Company from the prairie section through the 
 Crow’s Nest Pass, opening up a country whose mar- 
 vellous wealth in coal and mineral is now known 
 
 327 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 throughout the world. Meanwhile the Great North- 
 ern Railway has crossed the border from the state 
 of Washington, connecting Vancouver with the rail- 
 ways of the United States and promising soon to 
 establish another and much needed outlet from the 
 Kootenays westward to the coast. But these re- 
 sults, substantial as they are, form but an earnest 
 of the* progress which the immediate future holds, 
 when, to mention only the greatest of several 
 lines that are projected, a second and even a third 
 road from Canada, piercing the mountains of Cari- 
 boo and Cassiar, shall cross the province three 
 hundred miles to the northward of the Canadian 
 Pacific Railway and awaken those primeval soli- 
 tudes to settled industry. As an interesting note to 
 the foregoing, it may be stated that the system of 
 roads and trails begun by Douglas, and built and 
 maintained by the government, amounted in 1900 
 to a total of over ten thousand miles. 
 
 The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway 
 marks from many points of view the beginning of 
 a new era in the development of British Columbia — 
 so far-reaching was its effect in affording transport 
 for the growing industries of the province and in 
 bringing the country into touch with the outside 
 world. From a population of 36,241 in the year of 
 confederation, grown to 49,459 in the decade fol- 
 lowing, the province had become a community of 
 178,657 souls in 1900, the date of the last Dominion 
 328 
 
AGRICULTURE 
 
 census, while the revenue has reached an estimated 
 total of $3,286,476 for the fiscal year of 1908, and 
 the import and export trade a total of approxi- 
 mately $40,000,000. A very brief indication of 
 the economic and industrial progress reflected in 
 these returns, and appropriate in the case of a 
 community whose history from the outset is prim- 
 arily a study in industrial development, is all that 
 may be attempted in this restricted space. 
 
 Agriculture, until recent years, cannot be said to 
 have attained importance as an industry in British 
 Columbia, though progress relatively has been very 
 rapid. In the decade of 1890-1900, the agricultural 
 area of the province increased, according to the 
 Dominion census, from 115,184 to 171,447 acres, 
 the latter representing a total value in agricultural 
 property of $33,491,978. This is less than one 
 per cent, of the entire area of the province, and the 
 returns do not enter into comparison with those of 
 Ontario and the north-west provinces. The reason 
 is to be sought in the heavily timbered nature of 
 the valleys, which, notwithstanding their fertility, 
 require capital for development in all but a few 
 sections, whereas the neighbouring prairies of the 
 north-west provinces have offered no resistance of 
 this kind, and have naturally been occupied more 
 rapidly. Large areas of British Columbia will be 
 available for agriculture only on the introduction 
 of irrigation. Hard wheat, moreover, is not grown 
 in the portions of the province as yet devoted to 
 
 329 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 agriculture. The advantages of the British Columbia 
 climate, however, have given a special impetus to 
 fruit growing, and the orchards of Okanagan 
 are already known in the leading markets of the 
 world, not only for the quality of the fruit but for 
 the enterprise and skill of the grower. In 1901, there 
 were 7,430 acres in orchards, with some 650,000 
 trees; in 1906 there were 40,000 acres with 2,700,- 
 000 trees. Dairying and cattle raising also are, by 
 every indication, on the eve of an important future, 
 the present year exceeding any previous record in 
 the quantity and quality of the output. In 1900 
 there were seven cheese and butter factories in 
 operation; in 1906 there were nineteen. There are 
 ranches in British Columbia carrying ten and fifteen 
 thousand cattle, but the tendency is to break up 
 these larger holdings into farms. Legislation has 
 kept pace with these developments, the laws for 
 the promotion of agricultural societies, Farmers’ 
 Institutes, Co-operative Associations, Dairying As- 
 sociations, Boards of Horticulture, and various 
 lands, drainage, animals and cattle Acts, being 
 among the most advanced in the Dominion. 
 
 The fisheries of British Columbia, once the al- 
 most sole support of the native population and no 
 mean source of revenue to the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company, are now a household word throughout 
 the world. Every species of salmon known to 
 the Pacific abound in its waters — the sockeye, the 
 spring, the cohoe, the humpback and the dog- 
 330 
 
THE FISHERIES 
 
 salmon. The taking and preserving of these fish has 
 grown into the most distinctive, if not the greatest, 
 industry of the province. The mysterious four 
 years’ absence of the sockeyes in the depths of the 
 Pacific, the teeming millions in which they return 
 to spawn and to die in the streams that gave them 
 birth, and the unique methods of capture and 
 manufacture, are familiar features. In 1897 and 
 1901, the two most productive years on record, 
 no less than 1,026,545 and 1,247,212 cases of 
 salmon were put up in British Columbia. From 
 4,000 to 20,000 men are employed in the industry, 
 according to the season. Unfortunately, the pro- 
 vince is unable to reap the whole of the magni- 
 ficent harvest which her rivers yield. On their 
 return from the sea, the sockeyes pass for many 
 miles along the shores and islands of the United 
 States, where they are taken without let or hind- 
 rance by the canners of Puget Sound, who an- 
 nually secure a larger pack than British Colum- 
 bia herself and render any attempt at preservation 
 or regulation extremely difficult. But the salmon is 
 not the only food fish of British Columbia. Halibut 
 and herring yield an increasing return, the latter 
 under methods which promise a prosperous future. 
 Whale fishing, which in early days found the Sand- 
 wich Islands the most convenient centre, has as- 
 sumed great importance within the past two years 
 off Vancouver Island. For many years, also, Vic- 
 toria has been the headquarters of the sealing fleet 
 
 331 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 of Canada in the Northern Pacific, which yields a 
 considerable, though steadily decreasing, return. 
 
 From the pigmy efforts of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company in the sawing and marketing of lumber, 
 dependent almost wholly upon the demands of 
 the Russian and Northern Pacific trade, has 
 sprung up an industry that produces hundreds of 
 millions of feet annually and extends to Europe, 
 Asia, and South America, as well as meeting the 
 enormously increased demand arising from the set- 
 tlement of the Canadian prairies. Possessing per- 
 haps the greatest compact area of merchantable 
 timber on the North American continent, the 
 province, in the face of the general depletion, holds 
 her forest wealth as second only to her mines 
 among her great natural resources, if the extra- 
 ordinary trade of 1906 and 1907 has not advanced 
 it to the premier place. Apart from its abundance, 
 the magnificence of the growth attained by the 
 Douglas fir and the giant cedars of Vancouver 
 Island give an added value to the product, trees of 
 eight, ten and eleven feet diameter and three hund- 
 red feet in height, being not infrequently found. 
 Fires have occasioned an enormous and deplorable 
 waste, especially in the interior of the province 
 beyond the humid influence of the ocean; but in 
 this as in other respects the policy of the gov- 
 ernment has been enlightened, and under an im- 
 proved system of protection losses were never so 
 small as at present. What the general progress of 
 332 
 
LUMBERING AND MINING 
 
 the industry has been, may be judged from the fact 
 that in 1888, the first year for which official statis- 
 tics are available, the number of mills in operation 
 was twenty-five, and the total cut 31,868,884 feet; 
 whereas in 1902 the number of mills had increased 
 to one hundred and five, and the annual cut to 
 281,945,866 feet, figures which have been nearly 
 doubled since the rapid settlement of Manitoba, 
 Saskatchewan and Alberta has created a new and, 
 for many years to come, a heavy market for the 
 products of the British Columbia forests. Up to 
 confederation it was estimated that the entire cut 
 of the colony had not exceeded two hundred and 
 fifty million feet. Meanwhile, the manufacture of 
 shingles has frequently reached half a billion yearly, 
 and the fleet required to transport the growing 
 output to the foreign market has been multiplied 
 by several times. 
 
 But the leading asset of British Columbia has, 
 from the moment of her birth in 1858, been looked 
 for in her wealth in mineral. The beginning of the 
 mining industry has been already described. It may 
 be said that in so far as placer mining is concerned, 
 the year 1863, with its total output of nearly four 
 millions in gold, has remained the highest point to 
 which production has attained. Yet Cariboo in 
 1900 was still yielding $700,000, the new Atlin 
 district of the far north-west being the other 
 leading producer with a total of over $400,000. 
 But the days of the rocker and the sluice have 
 
 333 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 forever passed away, and the hope of the future 
 in these fields is in the great hydraulic processes, 
 established at enormous cost, which have already 
 been installed on the scenes of the excitement of 
 1860-5. The placers, however, now yield but a 
 small part of the annual harvest of mineral in 
 British Columbia. Metalliferous lode mining, which 
 can scarcely be said to have been followed before 
 1891, and which now yields from the mines of the 
 Rossland,the Nelson, the Slocan and the Boundary 
 camps alone an annual product valued at $14,000,- 
 000, has become the great and foremost industry of 
 the province. In coal mining, the small beginning of 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company on Vancouver Island 
 which has been duly noted and which in 1861 
 passed under the control of the “Vancouver Coal 
 Mining and Land Company,” has grown from year 
 to year until an annual production of over a million 
 and a half tons has been reached. In addition, the 
 fields of the Crow’s Nest Pass began shipping in- 
 1898, and have now a daily capacity of four thou- 
 sand tons, with almost unlimited resources in 
 areas to draw upon and markets to supply. Legisla- 
 tion of an enlightened character has accompanied 
 this great development. In 1877, child and female 
 labour underground in coal mines was forbidden, 
 and in a series of enactments since, the safety of 
 employees has been guarded by every means 
 suggested by experience. The latest of these 
 enforce the eight hour day in the coal mines, 
 334 
 
INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 metalliferous mines and smelters throughout the 
 province. 
 
 If manufacturing has had less incentive to growth 
 than the sister industries, the progress made is far 
 from inconsiderable. In 1901 the Dominion cen- 
 sus showed a capital of $22,901,892 invested in 
 manufacturing in British Columbia, a total which 
 places the province fourth, after Ontario, Quebec 
 and Nova Scotia, in Canada. The session of the leg- 
 islature of 1908 has placed a Factories Act upon the 
 statute-book that constitutes perhaps the most ad- 
 vanced legislation of the kind in Canada to-day. 
 
 Industrial problems of no mean order have fol- 
 lowed in the wake of this remarkable and steady 
 progress. In general, they have been those familiar 
 in communities where placer-gold or other great 
 natural resources are free to all. The spirit of buoy- 
 ancy, natural to a new and vigorous community, is 
 still reflected in the high prices of commodities and 
 in the high wages and shorter hours which wide- 
 spread organization has been able to obtain for 
 labour. Population is less fixed than in older Can- 
 ada, and there is less of settled order in the general 
 industrial life. Nowhere in Canada have industrial 
 disputes been waged with greater bitterness and 
 violence than in British Columbia. This, however, 
 is but to say that the province, in spite of its 
 substantial achievements, is still in its infancy as an 
 industrial community, and that the impulse which 
 it obeys is western. 
 
 335 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 The problem of Oriental labour is shared with 
 the rest of the Pacific coast. From the days of the 
 first rush of gold-seekers into the Fraser Valley, the 
 Chinese have been in the province. The first official 
 reference to their presence is found, in 1859, in a 
 report of the assistant gold commissioner of the 
 district of Lytton, which was thought of sufficient 
 importance to warrant transmission to the colonial 
 office. The first detachment numbered in the neigh- 
 bourhood of thirty. Trouble followed almost im- 
 mediately in their wake. The supplying of liquor 
 to the savages by the whites soon found a danger- 
 ous counterpart in their being furnished with arms 
 and ammunition by the Chinese, and when the min- 
 ers drove the latter away the result was to arouse 
 the open hostility of the Indians. The Chinese were 
 present in considerable numbers in the opening up 
 of Cariboo, working by their patient effort claims 
 that the white miner passed over in contempt. By 
 1881, they numbered 4,383. The period of the con- 
 struction of the Canadian Pacific Railway followed, 
 and by 1891 there were 9,129 Chinese in Canada. 
 But the heaviest influx began in 1895, between 
 which year and 1898 the average immigration of 
 Chinese amounted to 2,100 yearly. By 1901, the 
 total had reached 10,792, of whom 14,376 accord- 
 ing to incomplete returns, remained in British 
 Columbia. A capitation tax of $50, later raised 
 to $100, proved ineffectual to stem the tide. The 
 highest point of the movement was reached in 1900 
 336 
 
ORIENTAL IMMIGRATION 
 
 when over six thousand Mongolians landed in Brit- 
 ish Columbia between the months of January and 
 April alone. Thereupon a Royal Commission of en- 
 quiry was appointed by the Dominion government, 
 in reply to a petition of the province, on whose re- 
 commendation the capitation tax was raised to 
 $500, since when the inflow has, until quite recent- 
 ly, wholly ceased. The immigrants are of the coolie 
 class entirely, and though not criminal are incapable 
 of assimilation, and live without family life in over- 
 crowded and unsanitary communities. The verdict 
 of the province at large is for the careful regulation 
 of the whole movement, though by the employers 
 of labour, especially those engaged in the extensive 
 works that accompany the development of a new 
 country, the cheap but inferior services of the 
 Chinese are in demand. The question of Japanese 
 immigration has arisen almost wholly in the past 
 decade. It may be said to have reached its solution 
 within the past year as the result of a special 
 mission to Japan of the Minister of Labour for 
 Canada. Still more recently the movement from 
 India has been restricted under an arrangement 
 concluded by the Deputy Minister of Labour with 
 the government of Great Britain. 
 
 In this review of purely material progress no 
 mention has been made of the background of 
 provincial politics against which it has been carried 
 out. The truth is that the annals of political con- 
 troversy in British Columbia are not of widespread 
 
 337 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 interest. As in the days of Douglas, the issues that 
 have arisen have been of practical administration 
 almost wholly. For that reason, possibly, a lack of 
 leadership or even of constructive party organiza- 
 tion (marked contrast with the period of Douglas!) 
 has been a feature of the politics of British Co- 
 lumbia. As already mentioned, the building of the 
 Canadian Pacific Railway furnished matter for the 
 politicians of a decade, and the local issues which 
 arose in conjunction with the controversy with 
 the Dominion were not always worthy of remem- 
 brance. Y et some exceedingly useful legislation has 
 been enacted, and in many respects the way has 
 been shown to the older provinces. Even in the 
 days of conflict with the Dominion over the terms 
 of union, sufficient respite was obtained to allow 
 the original restrictions on the suffrage to be 
 abolished by a series of Acts dealing with qualifica- 
 tion and registration. After this, attention was paid 
 to municipal affairs, the administration of justice, 
 the providing of a revenue, the improvement of 
 communications, the establishment of a lands 
 policy, and other matters of vital import to the 
 development of the province. 
 
 Education may well demand a statement to 
 itself. A beginning, as we know, was made in the 
 Crown colony of Vancouver Island in the public 
 schools which were opened by the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company in 1855, with the Rev. Edward Cridge, 
 the clergyman of the company, as the first honor- 
 338 
 
EDUCATION 
 
 ary superintendent of education. Ten years after- 
 wards, in 1865 , a free school system was established 
 by the island assembly; but the population of 
 the mainland was still too sparse to admit of any 
 regular and organized system. Even on Vancouver 
 Island the cost of schools did not exceed $10,000 
 per annum (the average pay of teachers being 
 $ 65.00 per month) and six of the eleven schools 
 established in 1865 had been forced by 1867 to 
 discontinue for lack of funds. By 1869 , when the 
 united colonies passed legislation on the subject, 
 there were still only twelve schools in existence, 
 seven being on the island, while of a school 
 population estimated at two thousand, only three 
 hundred and fifty were at school. Teachers were 
 appointed without examination, and there was 
 no inspection. The end of this disorganized and 
 inefficient system came with the Act of 1872 , 
 based largely on the Ontario Act of 1846 , but 
 modified to suit the immense area of the pro- 
 vince and the scattered nature of the population. 
 Under the improved conditions which immediately 
 followed, by 1874 there were over 1,200 names 
 on the various registers. By 1875 these had risen 
 to 1 , 685 , the number of schools being forty-five and 
 of teachers fifty. At present the roll is over 78 , 000 . 
 The consolidated Public School Act of 1876, the 
 Public School Act of 1879 , and further amend- 
 ments and consolidations in 1885 and 1891 are 
 later milestones in the progress of education in the 
 
 339 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 province. The Victoria High School dates from 
 1876, and those of New Westminster, Nanaimo and 
 Vancouver from 1884, 1886 and 1890, respectively. 
 The crowning point of the system may be said to 
 have been reached in 1906 with the establishment 
 of the Royal Institution for the Advancement of 
 Learning in British Columbia, in close affiliation 
 with one of the greatest of the universities of older 
 Canada, and with the passing of an Act in 1907 
 whereby the University of British Columbia, first 
 projected in 1891, was granted a reservation of pro- 
 vincial lands for use at such time as it might be 
 thought desirable to proceed with its organization. 
 In 1908 that organization was finally perfected 
 under special Act of the session. 
 
 Two important matters remain to be mentioned 
 in both of which the interests of the province 
 were primarily concerned, though the questions, 
 being international in scope, were dealt with by 
 Great Britain and the Dominion. These were 
 the controversies concerning jurisdiction in Beh- 
 ring Sea and with regard to the location of 
 the Alaskan boundary. The former arose from 
 the attempt of the United States to make of 
 Behring Sea a mare clausum under the terms of 
 the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Re- 
 lying on her interpretation of the Russian agree- 
 ments, seizures of a number of Canadian vessels 
 found sealing within those waters were made by 
 the United States in 1886, 1888 and 1889. On the 
 340 
 
THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY 
 
 protest of Great Britain, the dispute was referred 
 to arbitration, and the award declared the seizures 
 to be unlawful, Russia having been proved never 
 to have made good her claim that the sea be- 
 tween Alaska and Siberia was hers alone and 
 not a part of the great Pacific. The dispute con- 
 cerning the Alaskan boundary had been in pro- 
 gress for several years, and a joint commission 
 to locate the boundary had conducted surveys 
 during 1893-4. Here again the controversy pro- 
 per was one involving the interpretation of the 
 convention between Great Britain and Russia 
 in 1825. Did the line determining the thirty 
 miles of lisiere provided for by the treaty go 
 around the inlets and interior waters of the coast 
 (including the Lynn Canal concerning which the 
 widest divergence of views occurred and to which 
 the events arising out of the Y ukon gold discover- 
 ies gave special prominence); or should it pass along 
 the summits of the mountain range nearest the 
 shore line, crossing all narrower waters? The de- 
 cision of 1903, arrived at after negotiations lasting 
 many months, and yielding nearly all to the United 
 States, still smoulders with the dissatisfaction 
 which it aroused in Canada. Nevertheless, with the 
 confidence born of power, the ending of uncertain- 
 ty has been accepted as a gain in British Colum- 
 bia, and the province is now enabled to bend her 
 energies, without disquietude as without vain re- 
 grets, to the splendid tasks of the future. 
 
 341 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 How, then, shall we of the present, looking 
 before and after, with knowledge of events of half 
 a century, pass judgment on James Douglas, the 
 man whose work and character make up the 
 early history of a region so great in itself (as time 
 has but begun to prove) and doubly great because 
 it brings to our people a share in the mighty 
 destinies of the Pacific? 
 
 Let us begin with a definition. Let us recall the 
 scale on which he wrought and something of the 
 essential nature of his task, and so preserve our 
 sense of proportion. It was not what one would call 
 a great scale; it was not, by several standards, a 
 great task. We are apt to be confused by the vast- 
 ness of the raw materials of statehood which passed 
 through his hands, and so forget the smallness of 
 the human part in its beginning, the few points 
 at which it touched its immense background of 
 nature, and the simple and elementary character of 
 the polity which first arose. Far off and isolated as 
 the colony was, and closely guarded by the sover- 
 eign power, here were no problems, save at widest 
 intervals, touching the rival interests of nations; 
 to make the obvious comparison with the eastern 
 colonies, there was here no feud of ruling races to 
 allay, no Family Compact to uproot, no Clergy 
 Reserve to divide, no complicated fiscal policy to 
 arrange. If difficulties such as these arose, even 
 in rudimentary form, they were settled apart from 
 Douglas, or their settlement deferred. He antedated 
 342 
 
THE NATURE OF HIS TASK 
 
 the real political development of British Columbia, 
 and he dealt with no inherited conditions. 
 
 The truth is, he was almost wholly an admin- 
 istrator. Risen to be the leader of the great com- 
 mercial enterprise which had thrust its roots so 
 deeply into that virgin soil, the process of events 
 which made him ruler under the Crown in British 
 Columbia was, when all is said, a change of masters 
 primarily. While varying the ends to be attained, 
 and the means with which to secure them, it made 
 no vital alteration in those methods and principles 
 by which he had been wont to govern all his 
 actions. The establishment of discipline and order 
 among the miners of the Fraser valley, the framing 
 of the rules by which the single occupation of the 
 inhabitants might be carried on, the building of 
 roads, the founding of cities, the financing of the 
 system as a whole — such were his practical cares. 
 It was as if some huge and novel enterprise, 
 reared upon the basis of a past that had van- 
 ished as if at a word, were placed for its develop- 
 ment in his charge, his powers unlimited in all the 
 multifarious concerns of management, but subject 
 in their larger action to the plans, the policy and 
 the approval of its original creator. The difficulties 
 and responsibilities of his position were indeed very 
 great; had they fallen into hands less competent, 
 had they fallen even into other hands at all, it 
 might almost be said they would have carried con- 
 fusion if not disaster to the colony. Y et with it all 
 
 343 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the work of Douglas was that of a builder and 
 organizer, not that of an architect and creator in 
 the fashioning of British Columbia. 
 
 We will do well, then, to remember that of 
 statesmanship in the broad and usual sense the 
 career of Douglas does not furnish an example. 
 How, in truth, should he have been a statesman? 
 From the days of his youth he had had to deal with 
 naked fact — with the struggle first for bare ex- 
 istence, and later with the fierce and merciless 
 rivalry against which he had fought his way, step 
 by step and with a stern enjoyment, until he stood 
 free and in full mastery of the huge concern to 
 which he had bound his fortunes. Alert and 
 studious as he was, there was still a great gulf fixed 
 between a training such as that and an apprentice- 
 ship to liberal statecraft. Moreover, to repeat, it 
 was not to the exercise of statecraft he was called. 
 In the emergency of 1858, Douglas had qualities of 
 a value to the country greater than any working 
 knowledge of the principles of constitutionalism. 
 From the school of forty years’ service in the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company he had derived an ex- 
 perience — minute as it was comprehensive, and 
 wholly without parallel on the north-west coast — of 
 every problem of the British Columbia wilderness. 
 That stern devotion to his duty, that perfection 
 of the organizing faculty, and that absolute mastery 
 of detail which at all times characterized the mind 
 of Douglas, were a part of what the company had 
 344 
 
HIS PERSONAL GIFTS 
 
 taught him. Gifts wholly personal were his tact, 
 his resourcefulness, his judgment, and the firmness 
 with which he could enforce his decisions. Above 
 all, he had the power, both by nature and by train- 
 ing, of ruling men. He was the one man of his time 
 and place of whom as much could be said. If, there- 
 fore, we shall find him often wrong in matters that 
 lay beyond his experience — narrow in his attitude 
 toward the foreigner, the British policy of no dis- 
 crimination being for long beyond his grasp ; prone 
 to precipitation in certain phases of the affair of 
 San Juan; mistrustful ever of popular government 
 (being, to a degree beyond that of the ordinary 
 idealist, a believer in benevolent despotism); opposed 
 even to confederation in his later years ; — and while 
 we shall have reason often to rejoice that the im- 
 perial curb was present in his administration; we 
 shall never see him at a loss in any matter of the 
 actual management of the colony or without the 
 courage of his convictions when he felt himself on 
 ground which was his own. And that is indeed 
 to praise him greatly. Confronted with an inrush 
 of the most adventurous and irresponsible classes 
 in the world, rough and ungovernable when they 
 were not vicious, owning no law or authority save 
 that of their own rude customs, and powerful 
 enough to sweep all before them had they willed, 
 — the situation doubly embarrassed by the pro- 
 blem of the native races, — Douglas was able of 
 his own prestige and personality, without jot or 
 
 345 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 tittle of precedent whereon to base his action, to 
 turn all to the upbuilding of the colony, estab- 
 lishing the law and sovereignty of Great Britain, 
 firmly maintaining order, organizing the new com- 
 munity on terms that won the support and con- 
 fidence, where they might have looked only for the 
 enmity, of the wild and uncouth masses which made 
 up the population, giving in short to the world at 
 large the spectacle of a gold-field ruled as it was 
 never ruled before, and laying the sure foundations 
 of a greater community to be. This was the crown- 
 ing achievement of Douglas carried out at no small 
 sacrifice of his own ease and fortune ; never may we 
 cease to cherish appreciation of it. 
 
 It is proper to add that no one was more con- 
 scious of his place in the political development of 
 British Columbia than was Douglas himself. At 
 sixty-one years old, in full possession of his powers, 
 with an experience of the country greater than that 
 of any other man, he chose to regard his public 
 career as ended, rather than to launch upon that 
 unknown sea on which the methods of all his past 
 were to unlearn. For he was a product of the fur 
 trade, first and always. He ruled the colony as he 
 had ruled his company before. He could rule abso- 
 lutely, but he could not govern. Thus let him stand, 
 the greatest figure which the fur trade of Canada 
 ever gave to the order which came after it. 
 
 It may be well to notice again, with this domin- 
 ance of the Hudson’s Bay Company over the mind 
 346 
 
DOUGLAS AND THE COMPANY 
 
 of Douglas in view, a basis of attack that was 
 once of frequent use in the hands of his enemies. 
 He has been many times condemned in that, while 
 governor of Vancouver Island and still in the chief 
 command of the company, he did not scruple to 
 turn his dual office to the sole advantage of the 
 commercial enterprise. But this is surely to misread 
 the situation. As a matter of fact, Douglas in his 
 capacity of governor and chief factor in one was 
 almost wholly the chief factor. It could not have 
 been otherwise. The British government was fully 
 cognizant and expected, probably, no more than 
 that the arrangement should secure, during an un- 
 settled and indeterminate interval, the recognition 
 of the imperial authority as supreme. This it did. 
 Even the illegal assumption of the control of the 
 Fraser in 1858 tended to the imperial advantage, 
 though the more immediate object was the benefit 
 of the company. The subservience of the govern- 
 ment’s interests was further emphasized by the 
 agreement which threw the expenses of administra- 
 tion upon the company. Anomalous as were the re- 
 lations thus created, they may not improbably have 
 saved the colony from greater evils. In any case 
 the charge of subordinating the interests of govern- 
 ment to those of the company so many times pre- 
 ferred by contemporary and later critics must be 
 laid at the door of the system rather than of Doug - 
 las. In the mainland colony no bitterness from this 
 cause arose. Notorious as was the singleness of pur- 
 
 347 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 pose with which the Honourable Company of Ad- 
 venturers trading into Hudson Bay pursued its 
 ends, and with which (so powerful was the influence 
 of that life of isolation and grinding discipline) it 
 was able to inspire its servants from the governor 
 down, no serious charge of favouritism was ever 
 brought home to Douglas once his relations with 
 the company were severed and he had pledged 
 himself to the sole service of the Crown. If he 
 never ceased to regard the company with that ex- 
 aggerated reverence which seems the inevitable re- 
 sult of having once risen in its service, this is only 
 to say that the force of nature was too strong for 
 him and that he could not rise superior to so subtle 
 and overwhelming an influence. 
 
 Upon the whole, however, if the testimony of 
 his own age be sought, it is greatly in his favour. 
 Of those whom he served, whether Crown or 
 company, the approval was never-failing. He was 
 indeed the most indefatigable, the most devoted, 
 and the most efficient of executive officers. The 
 confidence which the imperial government extended 
 to him, in the almost absolute power which it 
 placed in his hands, was of the highest of its kind. 
 It is not essential that we should attempt to fuse 
 the judgment of his other contemporaries. If he 
 won favour from those he served, it was not at the 
 expense of the mass of the people. Discontent 
 among the miners was not always silent, nor did 
 the attempt to levy tribute on their enterprise fail 
 348 
 
HIS INFLUENCE WITH THE INDIANS 
 
 to encounter fierce resistance ; yet with the adoption 
 of wiser counsels, as soon as he was free to do so, 
 Douglas gained a unique place in the miner’s heart 
 for his even-handed justice and his strict protection 
 of their interests. But greater far as an achieve- 
 ment was the hold which he secured and main- 
 tained upon the Indians. To the simple nature 
 of the savage the gift of intuition has been added 
 in unusual measure. No one more quickly recog- 
 nizes weakness; no one is readier to acknowledge 
 superiority. To win the Indian’s confidence and 
 obedience requires not only constant tact and care, 
 it has need of a courage never known to waver and 
 of a strict integrity of purpose as the guiding prin- 
 ciple in every action. Especially was this the case 
 with the native races of British Columbia, who if 
 less warlike than their kindred of the plains, 
 ranked higher in all the moral qualities and were 
 proverbial for their honesty, their hospitality and 
 their chastity. Building upon the foundations which 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company had established in 
 forty years of intercourse, Douglas attained much 
 more than the usual influence of trader and friend. 
 He became, as they called him, their father, to 
 whom under the slow and crushing weight of the 
 white invader they could look with the trustfulness 
 of children to temper, if he could not turn aside, the 
 bitterness of their fate. Thus by his personal author- 
 ity he gained what under other circumstances might 
 have cost the effusion of blood ; and the colony saw 
 
 349 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 none of the outrages that for years held the western 
 states in terror. Fear may at the first have formed 
 a portion of the awe which he inspired ; but in the 
 end it was the justice and the kindliness of the 
 governor that won their confidence. By nature 
 crafty and suspicious, keen to resent intrusion, and 
 reticent of their strongest feeling, they never for 
 an instant questioned the perfect ascendency which 
 he had gained over their minds, even while they 
 saw their lands despoiled before their eyes or 
 snatched from their possession. Decimated though 
 they had been by the vices and diseases of civiliza- 
 tion, they were still in 1858, when they passed 
 beneath the British Crown, at least as strong in 
 numbers as the invaders who dispossessed them. 
 To the man who by the patient work of years 
 could hold in leash this formidable element, exas- 
 perated by a treatment which had often added 
 insult to injury, the debt of the young community 
 is not easily to be estimated. 
 
 In person Sir James Douglas was not of the 
 ordinary; the fact is of importance. It was a 
 personal rule he bore. Six feet and more in height, 
 but so well proportioned as not to seem beyond 
 the usual stature, erect in carriage, muscular, 
 measured and somewhat slow in his movements, 
 yet natural and graceful withal, he was easily the 
 most striking figure in the whole North-West. 
 As he grew older, says Bancroft, the long face 
 seemed to grow longer, the high forehead to grow 
 350 
 
DOUGLAS AND McLOUGHLIN 
 
 still more massive and the large and clear-cut 
 features to assume still bolder proportions, while 
 the firm and earnest purpose of the eyes and mouth 
 deepened into a seriousness akin to melancholy. 
 In a London thoroughfare as in a Canadian forest, 
 in a parliament of the nations as in a hut of the 
 fur traders, he would have fixed attention. Linked 
 with those outer traits were a reserve and dignity, 
 amounting often to hauteur, which a life-time of 
 command had made a part of the man. But the 
 cold and stern demeanour, the slow, even lethargic, 
 manner, the formal and exaggerated courtesy, the 
 serious, not to say solemn, cast of thought, the 
 product of a widely informed though not original 
 mind, expressed in a weighty, if not grandiose, 
 habit of speech, were tempered by a deep religious- 
 ness that breathed through all his actions and made 
 him to those who could pierce the inscrutable ex- 
 terior a revelation of sympathy and kindness. To 
 the people whom he ruled he was the personifica- 
 tion of justice clothed with power. In that wild 
 unsettled time, so swayed by the obvious and in- 
 stinctive, it was a happy setting for the qualities 
 demanded in a governor. 
 
 It has been the practice to compare him (not 
 at all points to his advantage) with McLoughlin, 
 the other leader which the fur trade bred on the 
 Pacific slope; and the foil which the older man 
 presents to the younger and, it may be said, the 
 greater, has value of a striking kind in the at- 
 
 351 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 tempt to probe the inner recesses of the person- 
 ality of Douglas. Fashioned by the same life and 
 precepts, in the same iron mould of circumstance 
 and environment, inseparably wedded to ma- 
 terialism, there was inevitably much of similarity in 
 their character and in the manner in which they 
 achieved their results. In bent of mind, in outward 
 deportment, and in business methods, Douglas 
 copied largely from his master. Each nature, how- 
 ever, had qualities which marked it sharply from 
 the other. Temperamentally, McLoughlin was a 
 Celt; Douglas was a Saxon. McLoughlin was quick, 
 impulsive, intuitional ; Douglas was methodical, 
 conventional, exceedingly careful, and never to be 
 hurried. Without the warmth, the artlessness, the 
 spontaneity or the broad benevolence of McLough- 
 lin, Douglas would win respect long before he 
 touched the affections. It has been noted as a 
 characteristic difference that McLoughlin could 
 flatter, but that Douglas could not, though in 
 diplomacy on a wider scale the latter was the 
 superior. Magnanimous and forgetful of self, Mc- 
 Loughlin if he inspired fear and awe did so for his 
 masters; when his company’s interests clashed 
 with his sense of humanity, it was the company 
 and his own fortunes that had to suffer. Now 
 Douglas would be a party to no disloyalty however 
 virtuous; he never moved save toward success. 
 That was his duty as he saw it, and to duty he 
 could not be recreant. It is not that he ever failed 
 352 
 
THE SUPREME VIRTUE 
 
 in justice, or in kindness where it was deserved; 
 but even righteousness and humanity were made 
 to yield their profit. When McLoughlin fell, there 
 was no quixotic devotion to him on the part of 
 Douglas; he stepped into his place. If you were 
 asked why he should not, you would be puzzled 
 for an answer. You will never find Douglas in 
 the wrong; he was without the weaknesses of 
 which unworthiness is bred. His was a greater 
 intellect than McUoughlin’s, and he achieved a 
 greater destiny. Neither ever did an ignoble act. 
 Side by side, as in life, their names shall go 
 down unsullied in the annals of the great north- 
 west. 
 
 It comes, therefore, in the end, as we search 
 for the supreme virtue in the life and character 
 of Douglas, to a recognition of his plain effi- 
 ciency — that burning zeal, whatever the task in 
 hand, to do it in the way that shall be best, with 
 the sagacity to devise and the ability to carry out 
 the measures adapted to this end. Being what he 
 was, he would have risen to distinction, if not to 
 greatness, anywhere. He had the key that opens 
 every door, that of opportunity included. For how 
 can opportunity be created by any man save by 
 the preparedness and efficiency with which he faces 
 the world? 
 
 '‘A work is wanted to be done, and lo, the man 
 to do it ! ” Difficult and unexampled as was the 
 task of giving earliest form to British Columbia, 
 
 353 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 the country itself produced the man who carried 
 it to a successful issue. The genius of Douglas was 
 of our own western soil : let us remember that with 
 just pride. Let it be thought of happy augury to 
 the great province of the Pacific that in the most 
 dubious hour of her history she found within her- 
 self the leadership that brought her to safety and 
 enabled her to face her destiny unafraid. 
 
 354 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Aberdeen, Earl of, 183 
 Addington, Henry, British comis- 
 missioner in the Oregon bound- 
 ary dispute, 154, 163 
 Agriculture, in British Columbia, 
 78, 113, 128, 129, 130, 131, 136, 
 185, 256, 316, 329 
 Alaska, trade with, 78. See also 
 Russia 
 
 Alaskan boundary question, the, 
 118, 283, 341 
 Alexandria, Fort, 98 
 Aliens, rights of, 244. See also 
 Foreigners 
 Allan, Sir Hugh, 321 
 Allar^on, explorer, 6 
 American Civil War, 281, 282 
 Amor de Cosmos, 271, 306-8 
 Anderson, A. C., 117, 120, 186, 
 217, 222 
 
 Annexation with United States, dis- 
 cussed, 311, 323 
 Anian, strait of, 2, 9, 15, 19 
 Antler Creek, 287 
 Ashburton, Lord, 156 
 Ashley, American trader, 134 
 Assembly, Vancouver Island, 208. 
 
 See also Legislature 
 Astor, John Jacob, 68 
 Astoria, 4, 64, 65, 71, 133, 148, 
 149, 150, 160, 161, 163 
 Athabaska Pass, discovered, 58 
 Aurora claim, the, 287 
 
 B 
 
 Babine, Fort, 98 
 Babines, the, an Indian tribe, 97 
 Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, Spanish 
 discoverer, 5, 91 
 
 Bancroft, Herbert H., quoted, 105, 
 198, 283, 352 
 
 Baranoff, Alexander Andreyevitch, 
 Russian governor, 43, 44, 45 
 Barkerville, 287 
 Baynes, Rear-Admiral, 245 
 Bear Lake, 104 
 
 Beaver , the, 178, 179, 180, 181, 185 
 Beaver Harbour, 204 
 Beg’oie, Sir Matthew Baillie, judge 
 of British Columbia, early life, 
 appointed chief-justice of British 
 Columbia and Vancouver Island 
 in 1866, his work in the colony, 
 239; his journey to the Upper 
 Fraser and his impressions, 254, 
 255 ; his stern and impartial jus- 
 tice, 255 
 
 Behring Sea dispute, the, 283, 340 
 Behring, Vitus, navigator, 39, 40 
 Billings, Joseph, 26 
 Blanshard, Richard, first governor 
 of the colony, 199 ; his tenure of 
 office, 203-5 
 
 Bodega y Quadra, see Quadra 
 Bolduc, Jesuit missionary, 140, 178, 
 179 
 
 Bonneville, American trader, 135 
 Boston , destruction of the, 37 
 
 357 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 
 Boundary, see Alaskan boundary, 
 Oregon boundary, San J uan 
 affair 
 
 Bow River Pass, discovered, 58 
 Brew, Chartres, 239 
 Brigades, the, 82 
 
 British Columbia, origin of, 1 ; 
 name, 57 ; organization, 229 ; con- 
 stitution of colony, 231, 232; in 
 1858, 241, 242; dissatisfaction in, 
 289-95 ; wealth of, at Confedera- 
 tion, 316; later progress in, 311 
 et seq. 
 
 Broughton, Lieutenant, explores the 
 Columbia, 24, 34, 161 
 Buchanan, President, 156 
 
 C 
 
 Cabrillo, Spanish explorer, 6 
 Cadboro , the, 116, 180, 185, 188 
 Calhoun, represents the United 
 States on the Oregon boundary 
 question, 156, 164 
 California, coasted, 6, 7, 12, 15 ; 
 garrisoned by Spain, 13; Russia 
 in, 44; Hudson’s Bay Company 
 in, 125-7 
 
 Callicum, native chief, 27 
 Cameron, David, first chief-justice 
 of the colony, 200, 217 
 Camosun, Indian village, 175, 176 
 Campbell, Archibald, United States 
 commissioner on the Alaska 
 boundary question, 278 
 Campbell, Robert, explorer, 123-5 
 Canada, cession of, 62 
 Canadian Pacific Railway, 313, 315, 
 317-27 
 
 Canneries, the British Columbia, 
 331. See also Fishing 
 
 358 
 
 Canning, Stratford, represents 
 Great Britain on the Oregon 
 boundary dispute, 154 
 Capital of British Columbia, selec- 
 tion of, 246, 299, 300, 311 
 Cariboo, 254; gold discovered in, 
 271, 284-9, 298 
 Cariboo wagon road, the, 253 
 Carey, G. H., 239 
 Carnarvon terms, the, 320, 322 
 Carriers, the, 97 
 Carver, Jonathan, 19, 56 
 Cassiar, 286, 287 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 150 
 Cavendish, Sir Thomas, English 
 sailor, 8 
 
 Cedar Creek, 286 
 Charles, William, 265 
 Chilcotin Indians, 97, 267 
 China, emporium for furs, 22; trade 
 with, 70 
 
 Chinese, 291, 336, 337 
 Chinook jargon, the, 268 
 Clark, see Lewis and Clark 
 Clatsop, Lewis and Clark at, 67 
 Clayoquot, 33 
 
 Clergy Reserves, 270, 271, 273, 274 
 Clover Point, 177 
 Coal mining, 78, 190, 334 
 Colnett, Captain, explorer, 22 
 Colonist , the, newspaper, founded, 
 271, 306, 308 
 
 Colonization, progress of, in Amer- 
 ica, 2, 12. See also Settlement, 
 Immigration 
 
 Columbia River, seen by Heceta, 
 14; discovered by Gray, 24; de- 
 scended by Thompson, 58 
 Columbia , voyage of the, 23, 24 
 Colville, Fort, 116, 222 
 
INDEX 
 
 Committee of House of Commons 
 on Hudson’s Bay Company, 201-3 
 Confederation, 311 et seq. 
 
 Conolly, William, chief factor, 99 
 Conolly, Fort, 104 
 Constitution of British Columbia, 
 231 
 
 Contiguity, as a claim to sove- 
 reignty, 163 
 Convoy , the, 136 
 
 Cook, Captain James, English navi- 
 gator, 14, 19 ; arrives on the 
 north-west coast of North Amer- 
 ica (1778), 20; explores the coast 
 from the 45th parallel to the 
 Arctic Ocean, 20, 21 ; killed in 
 the Sandwich Islands (1779), 21 ; 
 mentioned, 50, 148, 160 
 Cook’s Inlet, discovery of, 21 
 Cooper, James, 197, 204 
 Co-operation, in road building, 238, 
 250, 251 
 
 Coppermine River, discovered, 51 
 Coronada, Francisco Vasquez de, 
 Spanish explorer, 7 
 Cortez, 6 
 
 Cosmos, Amor de, see Amor de 
 Cosmos 
 
 Cottonwood River, the, 287 
 Council, established on Vancouver 
 Island, 204, 207 ; of British Co- 
 lumbia, established, 294 ; abolish- 
 ed, 315 
 
 Cowlitz River, agriculture on the, 
 130, 301 
 
 Council, legislative, of British Co- 
 lumbia, 231, 294 
 Couteau mines, the, 223 
 Cowichans, the, Indian tribe, 182 
 Crosby, Thomas, 270 
 
 Crown lands, 240, 291 
 Crow’s Nest Pass coal mines, 334 
 Crow’s Nest Pass Railway, 327 
 Cunningham Creek, 287 
 Currency, United States, legalized, 
 273 
 
 Customs duties, see Duties, Tariff, 
 Taxation 
 
 Cutler, American settler on San 
 Juan, 280, 281 
 
 D 
 
 Dairying, 330. See also Agricul- 
 ture 
 
 Dallas, A. G., son-in-law of Douglas 
 and governor of the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company at Winnipeg, 103, 200 ; 
 president of the Victoria board of 
 management, 265 
 
 Dease, H.B.C. factor and explorer, 
 285 
 
 Dease, Fort, 124 
 
 Debt, colonial, 262. See also Fin- 
 ance 
 
 Demers, Rev. Father, Jesuit mis- 
 sionary, 141, 269 
 Dene Indians, 97 
 Derby (New Langley), 246 
 Dewdney, E , minister of the in- 
 terior for Canada and later lieu- 
 tenant-governor of British Co- 
 lumbia, 252, 253 
 Dewdney trail, the, 253 
 Discovery, as a claim to sovereign- 
 ty, 159, 160 
 
 Dixon, Captain, fur trader, 22 
 Douglas, Sir James, his place in 
 western history, 84-6 ; character- 
 istics, 87-9; birth, parentage and 
 education, 91-3; joins the North- 
 
 359 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 West Company, 93-4 ; in New 
 Caledonia, 96, 99, 100-9 ; his 
 marriage, 103; is sent to Fort 
 Vancouver, 110, 112, 113; activ- 
 ities there, 121-2; in California, 
 126 ; succeeds McLoughlin, 144 ; 
 founds Victoria, 175-80; removes 
 to Victoria, 188; his relations 
 with Blanshard, 203; appointed 
 governor of Vancouver Island, 
 205; nature of his rule, 207-8; 
 summons a legislature, 209; his in- 
 augural speech, 211-16; adminis- 
 tration of justice, 218; his reports 
 on gold discoveries, 219, 220, 222, 
 223, 228; his relations with the 
 miners, 226; visits the Fraser, 
 227 ; appointed governor of British 
 Columbia, 229, 230; his powers, 
 231, 234, 235; appointments, 240; 
 second visit to the Fraser, 243, 
 244; sworn in as governor, 245, 
 246; builds the first trail to the 
 diggings, 249-52; subsequent 
 roads, 252-4; third visit to the 
 Fraser, 256, 257 ; his financial 
 policy, 258-62; his attitude to the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company, 263, 
 264, 346-8; his disputes with the 
 Vancouver Island assembly, 272, 
 273; the San Juan affair, 275-83; 
 retires as governor of Vancouver 
 Island, 289; dissatisfaction with 
 dual governorship, 289, 290; his 
 views on representative govern- 
 ment for British Columbia, 292-4; 
 opens the British Columbia as- 
 sembly, 296; retires from gover- 
 norship of British Columbia, 300-7 ; 
 visits Europe, 308-9; his death, 
 
 360 
 
 310; review of his work and char- 
 acter, 342-54 
 
 Douglas, Captain William, 27, 28 
 Douglas fir, the, 332 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 7, 8, 16, 147 
 Dufferin, Lord, 323 
 Duncan, Captain, 22 
 Duncan, William, Church of Eng- 
 land missionary, 270 
 Dunn, John, 117 
 Durham, Fort, 122 
 Duties, import, 232, 291 
 
 E 
 
 Edgar, Sir James, 320 
 Edinburgh Review , the, on Oregon, 
 170 
 
 Education, 215, 271, 296, 338, 339 
 Election, first, on Vancouver Island, 
 210, 274 
 
 Electoral districts, B.C., 315 
 EKsa, Spanish explorer, his attempt 
 to explore the strait of J uan de 
 Fuca, 25, 26 
 
 England, see Great Britain 
 Esquimalt, 175 
 Essington, Fort, 118 
 Etoline, Adolphus, Russian gover- 
 nor, 45, 122 
 
 Expenditures, public, 216, 258, 295. 
 See also Finance 
 
 F 
 
 Factories Act, the B.C., 335 
 Fidalgo, 26 
 
 Financial condition of British Co- 
 lumbia, 216, 258, 262, 295. See 
 also Revenue 
 
 Finlayson, Roderick, chief factor of 
 the Hudson’s Bay Company, 117; 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 with the force that took posses- 
 sion of Fort Stikine, 122; takes 
 charge at Fort Camosun, 181-3; 
 appointed head accountant of the 
 Western Department, 188-9; in- 
 cluded in Douglas’s council of 
 advisers, 207 ; member of the first 
 British Columbia council, 217 
 Finlayson, Lake, 124 
 Fishing, in New Caledonia, 101, 102; 
 
 at Langley, 116, 129, 136, 330 
 Florida treaty, the, 153, 165 
 Fonte, Admiral de, 19, 22 
 Foreigners, status of, 219, 220, 231, 
 255, 258 
 
 Forts, plan of Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany’s, 82 
 
 Fox, Charles James, 32 
 Frances, Lake, discovered, 124 
 Franklin, Sir John, 103 
 Fraser, Simon, operations in New 
 Caledonia, 59; descends the Ta- 
 couche Tesse, 60, 61; assumes 
 command of the Red River De- 
 partment, 98; his death, 98 
 Fraser, Fort, 98 
 Fraser route, the, 186 
 Free trade, on Vancouver Island, 
 293 
 
 French Revolution, the, 17, 31 
 Friendly Cove, Spanish settlement 
 at, 26; visited by Meares, 26, 27 
 Fruit growing, 330 
 Fuca, Juan de, voyage of, 8, 9 
 Fur trade, in sea-otter, 22; status 
 of, 161, characteristics of; 73-82. 
 See also Hudson’s Bay Company 
 
 G 
 
 Galjano, Lieutenant, 35 
 
 Gallatin, representative of the United 
 States in the Oregon boundary 
 dispute, 151, 154, 158, 161, 170 
 Galvez, Spanish governor, 13, 15 
 George, Fort, 98 
 George, Fort (Astoria), 149 
 German Emperor, arbitrator in the 
 San J uan affair, 283 
 Ghent, Treaty of, 149, 151, 165 
 Glenora, Fort, 121 
 Gold, discovery of, in California, 
 189; on the Fraser, 208, 221-8; 
 in Queen Charlotte Islands, 219; 
 yield of, 256. See also Cariboo 
 Gold Harbour, 221 
 Gold Mines Act of 1859, 261 
 Gordon, Hon. John, 183 
 Goulburne, representative of Great 
 Britain on the Oregon boundary 
 dispute, 151 
 
 Grahame, James A., 265 
 Grant, President, 283 
 Grant, W. Colquhoun, 196 
 Gray, Captain, of Boston, 23; dis- 
 covers the Columbia River, 24, 
 57, 148, 160, 161 
 
 Great Britain, in the Pacific, rights 
 of, on north-west coast, 7, 10, 11, 
 16, 18, 29, 30, 61, 148. See also 
 Chap. V, seriatim 
 Great Northern Railway, 328 
 Greenhow, American historiogra- 
 pher, 155, 169 
 Grey, Earl, 220 
 Grouse Creek, 287 
 
 H 
 
 Halkett, Fort, 123 
 Hanley, W. Wymond, collector of 
 Customs, 239 
 
 361 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Hanna, James, first trader in sea- 
 otter, 22 
 Harmon, 98 
 
 Harney, General, commander of the 
 military department of Oregon, 
 281, 282 
 
 Haro archipelago, the, 27 5, 277, 
 280 
 
 Haro, Canal de, 276, 279 
 Harvey Creek, 287 
 Hearne, Samuel, 51, 53 
 Heceta, Spanish explorer, 14, 57, 
 148 
 
 Helmcken, J. S., speaker of the 
 legislature and son-in-law of 
 Douglas, arrives in Victoria, 189; 
 member for Esquimalt, 210, 217; 
 re-elected to the parliament of 
 Vancouver Island, 274 
 Hill’s Bar, Douglas at, 227; affair 
 of, 247, 248 
 
 Hindu immigration, 337 
 Hope, voyage of the, 25 
 Hope, Fort, 186 
 Hope, miners at, 227 
 Horsefly Creek, 286 
 Hours of labour, in mines and 
 smelters, 334 
 
 Howe’s Pass, discovered by Thomp- 
 son, 58 
 
 Hudson’s Bay Company, traders 
 and explorers of, 4; it rules the 
 interior, 12; explorers on behalf 
 of the company, 51; absorbs the 
 North-West Company, 73, 162; 
 leading characteristics, general 
 system and policy, 73-83; some 
 prominent members of, 83-6; ex- 
 tension of trade, 114 et seq.\ tries 
 to secure a foothold in California, 
 
 362 
 
 125-7; its relations with the Puget 
 Sound Agricultural Company, 
 129-31; its policy with the United 
 States settlers, 143-5; its acquisi- 
 tion of Vancouver Island, colon- 
 ization and civil government, 191- 
 205; its officers elected to the 
 first parliament of Vancouver 
 Island, 217; its license in British 
 Columbia revoked, 229, 233; a 
 warning against favouritism, 240; 
 its relation to the colony, 262; 
 its internal history since 1859, 
 265, 266; the San J uan affair, 275- 
 83; Douglas’s forty years service 
 in, 344, 346, 347, 349 
 Huskisson, representative of Great 
 Britain in the Oregon boundary 
 dispute, 154, 163 
 
 I 
 
 Immigration, to Oregon, 138-43, 
 156, 192; to Vancouver Island, 
 195-206; Oriental, to British Co- 
 lumbia, 336-8 
 
 Indians, encounters with, by early 
 traders, 37; relations with, 79, 80, 
 214, 220, 233, 243, 266-7, 296; 
 Douglas’s influence over, 350 
 Industrial developments, early, 78; 
 
 later, in British Columbia, 329-35 
 Ingraham, American explorer, 25 
 
 J 
 
 Japanese immigration, 337 
 Jargon, the Chinook, 268 
 Jefferson, Thomas, character of, 64; 
 
 policy of, 65, 66, 67, 169 
 Jesuits, the, 3, 12; in Oregon, 138; 
 in British Columbia, 269 
 
INDEX 
 
 Jesup, General, report of, on 
 Oregon, 163, 164 
 
 Juan de Fuca, Spanish explorer, 8, 
 9, 22 
 
 Justice, administration of, in British 
 Columbia, 215, 216, 217, 255 
 
 K 
 
 Kamloops, 98, 222 
 Kamtchatka, fur trade in, 38 
 Keithley Creek, 287 
 Kelly, of Boston, his scheme of col- 
 onization, 135, 136 
 Kendrick, Captain, 23, 24 
 Kennedy, Arth ur, appointed 
 governor of Vancouver Island, 
 289 
 
 Kennedy, John E., member of Van- 
 couver Island’s first assembly, 
 210, 217 
 
 Kootenay district, first explored by 
 Thompson, 58 
 
 Kootenay trail, the, 253, 298 
 Krusenstern, Russian navigator, 
 his explorations, 46 
 
 L 
 
 LaboucheIre, British colonial secre- 
 tary, 209, 210 
 
 Labour, condition of, in British Co- 
 lumbia, 316; in mines, 334, 335. 
 See also W ages 
 
 Langford, Captain, bailiff of the 
 Puget Sound Company, 199; his 
 grievances, 199, 200; elected a 
 member of Vancouver Island’s 
 first assembly, but, lacking the 
 necessary qualifications, is dis- 
 placed, 210, 211 
 Langley, conditions at, 227 
 
 Langley, Fort, 116, 245 
 La Perouse, French naval officer, 
 25 
 
 Led yard, John, 68 
 Lee, Jason, 137, 140 
 Legislature, opening of, in Van- 
 couver Island, 212-6; in British 
 Columbia, 315 
 Lemaire, Dutch navigator, 5 
 Lewis and Clark, their expedition 
 to the mouth of the Columbia, 
 64, 160; in command of Jeffer- 
 son’s great expedition across the 
 continent, 66-9, 148 
 Liard, River, ascent of the, 123 
 Liard, Fort, 123 
 
 Library, the first, in British Co- 
 lumbia, 117 
 
 Licenses, liquor, 244; mining, 261 
 Lighthouses, 258, 260 
 Lightning Creek, 287 
 Lillooet road, the, 252 
 Liquor, sale of, 243, 244 
 Lots, price of, 244, 246, 247 
 Louisiana, passes to Spain, 13; 
 ceded to France, 63; boundaries 
 of, 64; purchase of, 63, 64, 66, 67, 
 150, 153, 167, 168 
 Lowhee Creek, 287 
 Lumbering, 128, 332 
 Lytton, Lord, 227, 231 
 
 M 
 
 Macdonald, Sir John A., 321, 324 
 Mackay, J. W., 211, 217 
 Mackenzie, Alexander, prime min- 
 ister of Canada, 321-3 
 Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 51, 52; 
 traces the Mackenzie River, 53; 
 crosses to the Pacific, 54, 148 
 
 363 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 McGowan, ex-judge of California, a 
 participant in the Hill’s Bar af- 
 fair, 248-9 
 McKay, 83, 95, 187 
 McLean, quoted, 106, 222 
 McLeod, Fort, 97 
 McLeod, John, ascends the Liard, 
 123 
 
 McLoughlin, Dr. John, 84, 94, 95, 
 111, 114, 139-42, 144, 187, 351, 
 352 
 
 McLoughlin, Jr., John, 122 
 McLoughlin, Fort, 117, 178 
 McNeill, Captain, 117, 176 
 McTavish, Dugald, 265 
 Magellan, Fernando, Portuguese 
 navigator, 5 
 
 Mails, transport of, 233. See also 
 Postage 
 
 Maldonado, Pedro Nunez, 6 
 Manson, Donald, in command of 
 Fort McLoughlin, 117; with Tol- 
 mie founds the first circulating 
 library on the Pacific coast, 117, 
 118; rules in New Caledonia for 
 twelve years, 285, 286 
 Manufacturing, in British Co- 
 lumbia, 335 
 
 Maquinna, native chief, 27 
 Marchand, Etienne, explores the 
 north-west coast, 25 
 Marco Polo, Venetian traveller, 2 
 Martinez, Estevan Jose, 13, 28 
 Meares, Captain, 22, 26, 27, 28 
 Melaspina, Spanish explorer, 25 
 Mendoza, Spanish explorer, 6 
 Metlakahtla, 270 
 
 Mexico, conquest of, 3, 5, 6; agree- 
 ment of Hudson’s Bay Company 
 with, 126, 127 
 
 364 
 
 Michaux, Andre, 68 
 Milton, Viscount, 317 
 Mines, gold, see Gold 
 Mining, regulation of, 261; progress 
 of, 333 
 
 Missionaries, 2, 114; in Oregon, 
 136-42; in British Columbia, 269 
 Mitchell Harbour, 221 
 Moody, Colonel, 236, 238, 247, 248, 
 252, 254 
 
 Monroe, Alexander, 265 
 Monroe, doctrine, the, 154, 167 
 Moresby Island, gold on, 221 
 Morice, Father, quoted, 107 
 Muir, John, 190, 210, 217 
 Mumford, Fort, 121 
 Musgrave, Anthony, appointed 
 governor, 314 
 
 N 
 
 Nahanais, Indian tribe, 97 
 Nanaimo, 190, 191 
 Napoleon, mentioned, 17, 18 
 Needham, Chief- Justice, 239 
 Nelson, Fort, 123 
 New Albion, 8 
 
 New Caledonia, 56, 97-9, 160. See 
 also Cariboo 
 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 271 
 New Langley, 246 
 New Westminster, 247, 292, 298 
 Nez Perce's, Indian tribe, 136, 137, 
 139 
 
 Nicommen, gold at, 222 
 Nisqually, agriculture at, 131 
 Nootka, discovered by Cook, 20; 
 trade at, 268 
 
 Nootka affair, the, 26, 27, 28, 31, 
 32, 35, 36, 160, 166 
 North American Fur Company, 134 
 
INDEX 
 
 North-West America , launching of 
 the, 28 
 
 North-West Company, the, traders 
 and explorers of, 4; its organiza- 
 tion, object and success, 51, 52; 
 three noted employees of, 57 et 
 seq.; its connection with the 
 Pacific Fur Company, 70, 71; 
 absorbed by the Hudson’s Bay 
 Company, 73 
 
 North-West passage, search for 
 the, 13, 17, 19, 50, 51. See also 
 Anian, Strait of, and Chapter I, 
 seriatim 
 
 O 
 
 Ogden, P. S., 120, 126, 187, 265, 
 285 
 
 Okanagan, 186 
 
 Omineca, gold in, 286, 287 
 
 Oregon, origin of the name, 56; 
 possession of, 62; settlement of, 
 138-43 
 
 Oregon boundary, 143, 145, 147- 
 74, 275. See also San Juan 
 affair 
 
 Oregon City, 187 
 
 Oregon River, reported by Carver, 
 19, 57 
 
 Orient, short route to the, 2, 5, 
 17 
 
 Oriental immigration, 336-8 
 
 Overland discovery, 49 et seq. 
 
 Owyhee , the, 136 
 
 P 
 
 Pacific Ocean, early voyages in, 3, 
 4, 12, 18 et seq. 
 
 Pacific Fur Company, 68, 69, 70, 
 71, 134, 152 
 
 Pacific Mail Company, 226 
 Pakenham, British Ambassador to 
 the United States, 156 
 Pambrun, 99 
 
 Parker, Presbyterian missionary, 
 
 137 
 
 Parliament buildings, at Victoria, 
 
 272 
 
 Peace River, ascended by Mac- 
 kenzie, 54; by Fraser, 59 
 Pearkes, George, 244 
 Pelly River, discovered by Camp- 
 bell, 124 
 
 Pemberton, J. D., 210, 240 
 Perez, Juan, 13, 14, 148 
 Peru, conquest of, 3, 5 
 Pilcher, 135 
 Pitt, William, 31 
 
 Pizarro, Francisco, Spanish ad- 
 venturer, 5 
 
 Political conditions, in British Co- 
 lumbia, 337, 338 
 Polk, James K., 157 
 Population of British Columbia, 
 291, 294, 328, 329 
 Porcupine River, 125 
 Portlock and Dixon, fur traders, 
 discover the separation of the 
 Queen Charlotte group from the 
 mainland, 22 
 
 Portugal, rights of, in America, 10, 
 27 
 
 Postage, 233, 313, 314 
 Prescription, right of, 167 
 Prevost, Captain, 278, 283 
 Prices at Victoria, 225; at the Fraser 
 diggings, 242, 243; of lots, 244, 
 246, 247; in Cariboo, 288 
 Prince of Wales Island, 118 
 Prince William’s Sound, visited by 
 
 365 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Quadra, 15; discovered by Cook, 
 21 
 
 Printing, first on Pacific coast, 138 
 
 Promishleniks, the, 41 
 
 Public lands, administration of, 291. 
 
 See also Crown lands 
 Puget Sound Agricultural Com- 
 pany, 129-31 
 Puritans, the, 3 
 
 Q 
 
 Quadra, Bodega y, voyage of, in the 
 Sonora, 14; represents Spain in 
 the Nootka affair, 32, 33; death 
 of, 34 
 
 Qualifications of electors, 209, 210 
 Queen Charlotte Islands, visited by 
 Perez, 14; by Portlock and 
 Dixon, 22; by William Douglas,. 
 28; gold discovered on, 219, 220 
 Queensborough, 247 
 Quesnel, Morris, 60 
 Quesnel, River, gold discovered on 
 the, 284, 285, 286 
 Quimper, Lieutenant, 25, 148 
 
 R 
 
 Raccoon, the, 149 
 Rae, W. G., 122, 127 
 Railways in British Columbia, 327. 
 See also Canadian Pacific Rail- 
 way 
 
 Reciprocity Treaty, 213 
 Reformation, the, influence of, on 
 colonization, 2 
 
 Renaissance, the, influence of, 2 
 Representative government, on 
 Vancouver Island, 208; in British 
 Columbia, 292-4. See also Legis- 
 lature 
 
 Revenue, 297 
 
 Revillagigedo Islands, discovered, 6 
 Richards, Captain, 278 
 Roads, building of, 238, 243, 249, 
 257, 305, 328 
 
 Robinson, representative of Great 
 Britain in the Oregon boundary 
 dispute, 151 
 
 Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 134 
 Rocky Mountain Portage, 97 
 Rosario Strait, 276, 279 
 Ross, Charles, in command at Fort 
 McLoughlin, 117; dies in com- 
 mand at Fort Camosun, 181 
 Ross Settlement, the, 44 
 Royal Engineers, the, their duties, 
 232; commanded by Colonel 
 Moody, 236; arrive at Victoria, 
 238; take part in the Hill’s Bar 
 affair, 247-9; they build a wagon 
 road from Harrison to the Upper 
 Fraser, 252; and the Cariboo 
 road, 253, 254; their work com- 
 pleted, they disband, 254 
 Royalty on gold proposed, 261 
 Rupert, Fort, 190 
 Rupert, Prince, of England and 
 Bohemia, 73 
 
 Rush, representative of the United 
 States in the Oregon boundary 
 dispute, 151, 154 
 
 Russia, occupies Alaska, 4, 12, 17, 
 32, 37-46; trade rivalry with, 
 114-19; treaties with, 128, 153 
 Russian American Company, or- 
 ganized, 43, 45 
 
 S 
 
 St. Elias, Mount, sighted by 
 Quadra, 15 
 
 366 
 
INDEX 
 
 St. James, ‘Fort, 98 
 Salmon, see Fishing 
 Sandwich Islands, visited by Cook, 
 21; by Vancouver, 34; trade 
 with, 78, 184 
 
 San Francisco, Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany at, 127 
 
 San Juan affair, the, 275-83 
 Santiago , voyages of the, 13, 14, 
 15 
 
 i( Sapperton,” 247 
 Sealing, 331 
 
 Sea- otter, 21, 22, 40, 148 
 Seaport, to be established, 232, 258 
 Sekanais, the, Indian tribe, 97, 
 104 
 
 Selkirk, Fort, 124 
 Settlement Act of 1884, 324 
 Settlement of new territory, 159; 
 
 of Vancouver Island, 195-205 
 Seymour, F rederick, appointed 
 governor of British Columbia, 
 295, 311, 312 
 
 Siberia, conquest of, 17, 38; fur 
 trade in, 38 
 
 Simpson, Fort, 116, 120 
 Simpson, Fort, on the Liard, 125 
 Simpson, Sir George, 109, 127 
 Skagits, Indian tribe, 182 
 Skeena River, gold on the, 221 
 Smith, Donald A., (Lord Strath- 
 cona), in the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany, 265; drives the last spike 
 of the C.P.R., 326 
 Smith, Jedidiah, American fur 
 trader, 126, 133, 134 
 ' Songhies, the, Indian tribe, 177 
 Sonora , voyage of the, 14, 15 
 Sovereignty of new territory, how 
 acquired, 159 
 
 Spain, conquers Mexico and Peru, 
 3, 5; national character of, 4, 11; 
 early voyages of, 5, 6; claims of, 
 in the New World, 10; colonial 
 policy of, 11; activity of, 13, 14, 
 15, 25, 26, 29, 35, 147, 148, 153, 
 165. See also Florida Treaty, 
 Oregon boundary, Louisiana 
 Spaulding, American missionary to 
 Oregon, 137, 140 
 
 Staines, Rev. R. J., chaplain to the 
 Hudson’s Bay Company, 188, 189 
 Stikme, occupation of the, 119, 120, 
 121 
 
 Stikme, Fort, 122 
 Strathcona, Lord, see Smith, Donald 
 A. 
 
 Stuart, John, 60, 98 
 Stuart Lake, discovered, 98 
 
 T 
 
 Tacouche Tesse, discovered by 
 Mackenzie, 54; descended by 
 Fraser, 59 
 
 Taku, Fort, 121, 122, 178 
 Tariffs, 232. See also Revenue 
 Taxation, 290, 291. See also Revenue 
 Telegraphs completed, 298 
 Texas, 164 
 
 Thompson, David, 57 ; his dis- 
 coveries, 58 
 Tipping, Captain, 22 
 Tod, John, of Fort McLeod, 99, 
 100, 105, 204 
 
 Tolmie,W. F., in charge of Fort Mc- 
 Loughlin, 117; with Man son 
 founds the first circulating library 
 on the Pacific coast, 117, 118 
 Tonquin , the, voyage and destruc- 
 tion of, 37, 71 
 
 367 
 
SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 
 
 Town sites, 240, 244, 246 
 Trade, early expansion of, 114; 
 
 growth of, 184, 316 
 Transportation, see Roads, Rail- 
 ways, Canadian Pacific Railway, 
 etc. 
 
 Treaties, between England and 
 Russia, 118, 120, 121 ; with 
 Mexico, 127. See also Florida, 
 Ghent, Utrecht 
 
 Treaty rights in Oregon, 165, 166 
 Trutch, Hon. J. W., first lieu- 
 tenant-governor of British Co- 
 lumbia, 3i6 
 
 Tsilalthach, Indian chief, 182 
 Tsoughilam, Indian chief, 182 
 Tyler, President, 156 
 Tzoelh nolle, a Fraser Lake Indian, 
 105-7 
 
 U 
 
 Ulloa, Antonio de, 6 
 Umpqua, Fort, 132 
 Union of the colonies of British 
 Columbia and Vancouver Island, 
 295, 297-300 
 
 United States, explores the north- 
 west coast, 18, 23, 61. See also 
 Oregon boundary, San Juan af- 
 fair, California 
 
 University of British Columbia, 340 
 Utrecht, Treaty of, 10 
 
 V 
 
 Valdez, Lieutenant, 35 
 Vancouver, city of, 326, 327 
 Vancouver, Fort, 110, 113, 132, 187 
 Vancouver, George, English navi- 
 gator, 17, 19; appointed British 
 commissioner in the Nootka af- 
 fair, 32, 33; explores the whole 
 
 368 
 
 north-west shore line, 34; his 
 friendship with Quadra cement- 
 ed in the naming of “ Quadra 
 and Vancouver Island,” 35 
 Vancouver Island, naming of, 35; 
 acquired by Hudson’s Bay Com- 
 pany, 191-206; conditions in, 271- 
 3, 293. See also Chap. VII, seri- 
 atim 
 
 Vanschouten, Dutch navigator, 5 
 Victoria, founding of, 146, 175-8; 
 growth of, 198, 224, 271, 290, 
 298; selected as capital, 311 
 Vizcaino, Sebastian, Spanish navi- 
 gator, 12, 13, 35, 148 
 
 W 
 
 Wadddington, Alfred, 317 
 Wages, 244, 267, 316 
 War of 1812, mentioned, 71, 149 
 Webster, Daniel, 170 
 West, settlement of the, 65 
 Western Department of the Hud- 
 son’s Bay Company, defined, 76- 
 8, 265 
 
 Western history, beginning of, 1 
 Whaling, 184, 331 
 Whitman, Presbyterian missionary, 
 137, 138, 187 
 
 Willamette, agriculture on the, 130; 
 Lee on the, 137; government 
 erected on the, 143 
 Willow River, gold on the, 287 
 Winnipeg, becomes centre of West- 
 tern Department, 265 
 Work, John, his expedition into the 
 wilds of Oregon, 132; member of 
 the Victoria board of manage- 
 ment, 265 
 
 Wrangell, Baron, 45, 120 
 
INDEX 
 
 Wyeth, American trader, 135 
 Y 
 
 Yale, J. M. , 99; in command at Fort 
 George, 105 
 Yale, Fort, 186 
 
 Yates, Joseph, 210 
 Yerba Buena Cove, 127 
 York boats, 82 
 Yukon, Fort, 125 
 
 Yukon, River, descended by Camp- 
 bell, 124, 125 J 
 
 369 
 

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