The coalition of the companies in 1821 was a victory for monopoly. It was also a victory for English capital, for English manufacturers and for English business organization. Economy, conservation and discipline could now be practised in the fur trade, and an attempt made to abolish the abuses born of competition: the sale of liquor and ammunition to the Indians, the givmg of gratuities, and the debt and lending system. The days of revels at the famous Beaver Club in Montreal were over, and the depot at Fort William was closed. All routes from the north-western interior were now adjusted to lead to Norway House on Lake Winnipeg, a business and administrative centre, and to York Factory on Hudson Bay, the terminus of the shipping lane from England.

The traders in the field noticed these changes, hut for them there were still the same wearisome and dangerous duties to be performed. Not a year went by without hardship and peril: starvation, exposure, death in the rapids and at the sand-bar, fire in the night, treachery, murder, sometimes mutiny. South of the Columbia River, nearly every summer there were war expeditions, as John Work wrote, against "savages made brave by ... . trust me, my friend, it is no jest being engaged in them, a ball from an Indian will send a poor d---l home as well as from a white man".1 "The privations and fatigues of a barbarous country"2 were still their lot, and "the vapid monotony of an inland trading Post"3 was broken only by the arrival of the express with Canadian newspapers and with letters from old companions, now stationed at distant posts or living in retirement in Montreal and other Canadian towns.

The need for companionship drove many a clerk and trader to take an Indian wife "after the custom of the country"; on long and dangerous trapping expeditions, the "little partner", or more affectionately, "the little rib", made camp-life endurable and performed many heavy tasks. Men like John Work were kind to these women, ordering trinkets for their adornment ("It is for the girl, I want these things, Some necklaces & earrings"),4 schooling them, and providing what comforts they could. No matter how much the traders might long to leave the service and return to civilization, affection and gratitude helped to keep them in the Indian country.

Often the little partner presented her master with so many sons and daughters that he remained at his post to earn a "competency" for their education, perhaps at the Red River Academy, or later, at the Fort Vancouver school or at the new Methodist missions on the Columbia River. Even those traders who professed to be deists or agnostics felt a keen sense of responsibility for inculcating in their half-breed children principles of "morality" and "habits of industry": to friends in Canada and England they sent begging letters, pleading to have their children taken in as members of more civilized households and apprenticed to trades. By 1840, however, the vogue for Indian and half-breed wives was changing; on their furloughs, traders now chose English and Scottish brides and brought them back to live in a country which previously had been considered no place for a white woman."

In the new coalition, it was the Nor'Westers who were affected most by the change. Authority and a class structure based on rank were substituted for the egalitarianism of the old co-partnership. West of the mountains, most of the "Commissioned gentlemen" were former Nor'Westers. As Chief Factors and Chief Traders they were allotted a share in the Hudson's Bay Company's earnings. Chief Factors were also given a voice in the administration of one of the Departments, the large units into which the Company divided its territories, and exercised the right of nomination for promotions. But above them now stood their masters in Fenchurch Street, the Governor and Committee in London, and their immediate superior, George Simpson, Governor of the expanded Northern Department of Rupert's Land. The clerk and the bourgeois who could earn "the approval of the great folks" was most quickly advanced, and every officer of the Company hoped to benefit from "the disposal of their favours".

A magnificent comradeship between equals had existed in the days of the North West Company: this esprit de corps old Nor'Westers were as determined to retain as they were to transfer their loyalty to the Hudson's Bay Company. With the conviction that they were energetically applying their talents in the new service, and confidently expecting his recognition and approval, they awaited Governor Simpson's first visit to the Far West.

When Sunday, August 15, 1824, arrived and the ship bearing his instructions from London had not yet appeared at York Factory, Governor Simpson could no longer restrain his impatience to inspect the Columbia Department. Since taking office in 1821, he had reconstructed the fur trade in all his other districts; new and challenging problems awaited solution in the area west of the mountains. A career man, thirty-seven years of age, with good connections, he had served only a short apprenticeship in the field. At his station on Lake Athabasca during the winter of 1820, he had learned something from personal experience about the transport problem of New Caledonia. The only basis of his knowledge, as yet, of conditions in the Columbia Department was rumour and report. He was impatient to be off: the season for northern navigation was drawing to a close, and Dr. John McLoughlin, appointed a Chief Factor of the district at the recent meeting of the Council of the Northern Department, was already twenty days on his way to Port George. Simpson decided to wait no longer; with Chief Trader James McMillan, he embarked in a canot du nord on the rough waters of Hayes River.

Travelling a new and difficult route by way of Nelson River, Frog Portage, Churchill River and Methy Portage, Simpson arrived at Isle a' la Crosse on September 5, and eleven days later, just before reaching Athabasca River, overtook his surprised, vexed and very much dishevelled subordinate. The speed of the expedition was now slackened "in order to give the Dr an Opportunity of keeping up,"5 but even so, Simpson was able to cut travel time from York Factory to Fort George at the mouth of the Columbia River, a distance of some 3,500 miles, from 104 to 84 days.

Along the way, Governor Simpson halted to consult with the men in the field. He had his own ideas concerning reforms to be made and innovations to be introduced into the fur trade, but it was his habit to weigh every Opinion. Since the coalition of the two great fur companies, economies had been effected by closing duplicate posts in the west and reducing personnel; he now wished to collect information which would help him to redirect and reorganize the transport system. The "most tedious harrassing and expensive transport in the Indian Country" was canoe freighting to and from New Caledonia. As he approached the mountains, and continued on his journey from Jasper House through Athabasca Pass to Boat Encampment, he pondered the advisability of substituting for the dangerous route along the Parsnip and Peace Rivers, the leather-shipment route through Athabasca and Yellowhead Passes, and then transferring New Caledonia's valuable furs to York boats at Edmonton for shipment by the Saskatchewan River route to York Factory. But it was too soon to reach a decision; he intended to winter at Fort George on the lower Columbia, and by spring he would have more information.

After leaving Boat Encampment, Simpson turned his attention to the request of the Governor and Committee in London that he investigate the possibility of developing trade on the north side of the Columbia River. The Americans might assert their right to repossess Fort George at any time, and the boundary discussions then in progress might terminate the ten-year arrangement for joint British and American occupation of the region west of the mountains. From Chief Trader McMillan, who had explored the upper Columbia River with Thompson in 1809, he sought a voluntary offer to undertake new exploration. When nothing came of this suggestion, he returned to the subject later in the day, spiritedly remarking that "rather than allow an other Season pass without obtaining a knowledge of the Coast natives & resources of that part of the Country (our ignorance of which after being established on the Coast upwards of Fourteen years being a disgrace to the whole Concern)", he, Governor Simpson, would go himself. Chagrined over his own original lack of enthusiasm, McMillan immediately offered his, services for "this dangerous and unpleasant mission".

At Spokane House, Governor Simpson received his first intimation that "everything on the Columbia... except the Trade [was] on too extended a scale. . . ." "If my information is correct", he wrote in his journal, "the Columbia Department from the Day of its Origin to the present hour has been neglected, shamefully mismanaged and a scene of the most wasteful extravagance and the most unfortunate dissention." He further observed that 'the good people of Spokane District and I believe of the interior of the Columbia generally have since its first establishment shewn an extraordinary predilection for European Provisions … all this time they may be said to have been eating Gold; such fare we cannot afford in the present times. . . ." A taste for salmon would have to be cultivated, the cost of conveying 'Eatables Drinkables and other Domestic Comforts" reduced, and the men at present engaged in transporting luxuries, released for more essential service.

Moreover, greater economy and more productive effort would have to be apparent in the Snake River trapping expeditions. For political rather than for commercial considerations, Governor Simpson decided to reverse his usual policy of conservation and launch an offensive to destroy this rich beaver, reserve. Ordering Peter Skene Ogden to "proceed direct for the heart of the Snake country towards the Banks of the Spanish River or Rio Colorado", he took the first step to make this strategic area, so seriously exposed to American penetration, a fur desert.

At Fort Okanogan, he ordered reduction of staff. At Fort Walla Walla, he found the traders too indulgent of the extravagant whims of their Indian wives, and criticized for his lassitude Chief Trader John Warren Dease, said by his friends to be a "great Tea Drinker", although Simpson's prying eye told him better: "Were he to drink a pint of Wine with his Friends on extraordinary occasions, get up earlier in the morning eat a hearty breakfast and drink less Tea I should have a much better opinion of him." Anticipating the establishment of an American claim to the south bank of the Columbia River, Simpson, before he left, made plans for Fort Walla Walla's removal to the north side of the river. By the time he arrived at Fort George, he had persuaded himself that "mismanagement and extravagance [had] been the order of the day" in the whole Columbia Department, and that a radical change must be effected. Reduction of staff at Fort George, Walla Walla, Spokane House and Fort Kamloops from 151 to 83 officers and men, making for an annual saving of over £2,000, would be one step in this direction.

In the course of his tour, Governor Simpson had kept in mind the present view of the Governor and Committee in London that although the best days of the beaver trade might be over in the Columbia Department, evacuation and withdrawal to New Caledonia, a step which had been contemplated two years earlier, would now be unwise. George Canning, the great British Foreign Minister, had pointed out to officers of the Company the vital importance to the Pacific trade of the coastline between the Columbia River and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Lack of definition of the western section of the International Boundary Line and equal sharing of trading rights with the Americans made the future uncertain, but attention to trade under the present territorial arrangement might yield national as well as commercial advantage.

Collision between the diametrically opposed commercial practices of British and American furtraders would, however, be difficult to avoid. In all of British North America lying outside the established colonies, from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, the British government had sanctioned paternalism and monopoly; in the Far West, American activity since the appearance of the first Yankee trader had been characterized by individualism and competition. Fortunately for the Hudson's Bay Company, no interference from British competitors need be feared for in spite of the growing popularity of Adam Smith's theories and the increasing British dislike of monopolistic privileges, the reorganized company had obtained in 1821, by Royal License, for a period of twenty-one years, the exclusive trading rights in the region lying between Rupert's Land and the Rocky Mountains, and in addition, by parliamentary act, the sole British right to trade in the "Indian Territory" west of the mountains.

During his residence at Fort George, Governor Simpson, to his own surprise, found himself growing more and more enthusiastic about trade prospects in the Columbia Department With extension of trade, and with proper management, he soon decided, the Department could be made to yield double the profit of any other part of North America. Formerly, in the days of the North West Company, New Caledonia, although supplied from the Columbia, had been merely an extension of the Athabasca Department, and the inland trade had vastly overshadowed the coastal. For the coastal trade, Fort George had served little useful purpose: the Nor'Westers, like the Yankee peddlers, were supplied with trading goods brought round the Horn, and like them, used their sailing ships as mobile bases. Simpson intended to change all this; he would integrate the inland and the coastal trade and choose a new and more central location for the Pacific depot.

Convinced that "Frazers River appears to be formed by nature as the grand communication with all our Establishments on this side the mountain", he allowed McMillan, his "Staunch & Manly Friend and Fellow Traveller", only eleven days' before despatching him on a northern expedition.

Accompanied by John Work and a party of forty men, including Sandwich Islanders and Iroquois, McMillan left Fort George on November 18. After portaging in "weighty rain" most of the way to Gray's Harbour, he followed the Chehalis River and again portaged to Puget Sound. Continuing along the eastern channel of the Sound to above the 49th parallel, he entered the Nicomekl River at Boundary Bay. Ascending this stream to a portage across the black and loamy Soil of Langley Prairie, he reached Salmon River, and paddling down its serpentine course, entered Fraser River on December 16 near the site later to be chosen for Fort Langley.
The first Europeans to reach the lower Fraser River since Simon Fraser's exploration were impressed by its size. "At this place", wrote John Work, "it is a fine looking River at least 1000 yards wide as wide as the Columbia at Oak Point".6 As the men ascended to Hatzic Lake, they found the country well populated with Indians who were ready to trade. Simpson had hoped that McMillan might be able to push north to Thompson River, but winter was upon him, and he was not properly equipped for an overland journey. Turning back, he travelled quickly down the river, and on December 20 his canoes, following the South Arm, successfully entered the Strait of Georgia from the main channel of the river.

Probably because Governor Simpson sought confirmation for a preconceived intention, he read into McMillan's report rather too much that was favourable. He decided to move the main depot to the Fraser River.

A desire to meet Russian competition on the North West Coast from a more strategic base influenced his judgment. The Russian-American Company was still very active in the northern fur trade, although it was not the threat that it had been a decade or so earlier when, after considering extension of its operations to Nootka Sound and the mouth of the Columbia River, it had established its post in California. The construction of Fort Kilmaurs on Babine Lake by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1822 had helped to direct the inter-tribal commerce of the Skeena River towards the Interior, and further diversion would probably result from the proposed establishment of Chilcotin and Connolly's Lake. But what Simpson called the "sweeping and absurd Ukase of the Russian Government"7 had fenced in the territory and waters north of 51 North Latitude. The pointed warning given by President James Monroe against further European colonization of the North American continent had been followed, in 1824, by delimitation of Russian and American spheres of influence, with 54º40' as the dividing line. The directors of the Hudson's Bay Company in London, already aware in 1824 that an Anglo-Russian agreement was in the offing, purchased the brig William and Ann, hoping to be able to use her for northern coastal trading. They were not disappointed; the Convention of February, 1825, established a demarcation line commencing in latitude 54º40', extending up Portland Canal to 56º North Latitude, and then running along the summit of the mountain range parallel to the Coast as far as the intersection with the 141st parallel. Across the lisière later known as the "Alaskan Panhandle", British subjects obtained the right of navigation and, for a period of ten years, the right to trade in coastal waters and to use the port of Sitka. With Fraser River as its main base, Simpson was certain that the Hudson's Bay Company "could with greater facility and at less expence extend our discoveries and Establishments to the Northward…".8

But the immediate task to be taken in hand was the selection on the north bank of the Columbia River of a new site for Fort George. Chief Factors Alexander Kennedy and John McLoughlin, sent to choose one, reported that they could find "no eligible Situation to Build on nigher the Entrance of the River"9 than Lieutenant W. B. Broughton's Belle Vue Point, a spot about eighty miles from the sea and near the mouth of the Willamette River. Buildings were erected there during the winter and goods transferred in the spring. Simpson intended the new trading-post to be secondary in importance to his prospective depot on Fraser River, but when he visited the site in the course of his return voyage, he was more than pleased with its location. "It will in Two Years hence be the finest place in North America", he wrote; "indeed I have rarely seen a Gentleman's Seat in England possessing so many natural advantages and where ornament and use are so agreeably combined".10

To identify British claim to the soil with Captain Vancouver's discovery of the river and coast, Simpson decided to name it in honour of "that distinguished navigator". Mustering the "Gentlemen, Servants, Chiefs & Indians", at sunrise on Saturday, March 19, 1825, he "Baptised it by breaking a Bottle of Rum on the Flag Staff and repeating the following words in a loud voice, 'In behalf of the Honble Hudsons Bay Coy I hereby name this Establishment Fort Vancouver God Save King George the 4th' with three cheers." In his journal he added a notation: "Gave a couple of Drains to the people and Indians on the occasion."

The "little emperor", who had had so few words of praise for any of his officers, had now arrived at almost all his major decisions for revitalizing the Columbia Department's fur trade. In the interest of retrenchment, he ordered imports to be reduced and attention paid to agriculture: "It has been said that Farming is no branch of the Fur Trade but I consider that every pursuit tending to leighten the Expence of the Trade is a Branch thereof. "11 As the site for a post to replace Spokane House, he selected for Fort Colvile land near Kettle Falls "where as much Grain and potatoes may be raised as would feed all the Natives of the Columbia".12 He revised transportation routes, and believing that the Fraser River could serve as highway from New Caledonia to the sea, he decided to abandon his earlier plan for rerouting that district's transport through Edmonton. The Snake and Umpqua trapping expeditions were reorganized. Taking the larger view of political and commercial prospects, which he felt the Council had failed to do, he proposed direct entry into the Canton trade. Finally, he invested Chief Factor John McLoughlin with wide discretionary power m making appointments and other important arrangements.

A temporary Council of the Northern Department which met at Norway House on June 20, 1825, gave approval to Simpson's plans. Less than a fortnight later, the Council in full session at York Factory granted his desire to annex New Caledonia to the Columbia for purposes of supply and transport, and directed Chief Factor William Connolly, in charge of the Northern District, to take the New Caledonia returns to Fort Vancouver in the spring of 1826, and there obtain the outfit.18 Presumably warned by Chief Factor John Stuart, whom he met on his return journey, that the Fraser River would have to be more carefully investigated before it was opened to transport, Simpson restored to use for the time being the North West Company's route from the Columbia River through the Okanagan Valley.

After the July meeting of the Council, he proceeded to England to spend the winter. Even at this distance, he interested himself in the affairs of the Columbia Department, continuing to send detailed instructions to Dr. McLoughlin, his senior both in years and in experience. Relations between the two men were still warm and friendly, although their views on important matters differed. McLoughlin neither accepted his Superior's fatalistic attitude concerning the eventual surrender of territory south of the Columbia River to the Americans, nor shared his interest in establishing Fraser River; still, he was willing to comply with orders.

McLoughlin's first attempt to establish a post at the mouth of the Fraser River in 1826 failed when "freemen", former servants of the Company, deserted to the Saskatchewan. In 1827, as instructed, he made use of the Cadboro, a small schooner of 72 tons burden, which had been sent from England for the coasting trade. On July 12, James McMillan, recently appointed a Chief Factor, embarked at Whidbey Island with a party of twenty-five men. Three days later the Cadboro reached the mouth of the Fraser River and then for nine days searched for a channel through the sand-heads. Finally, she was able to enter the river, and continuing up-stream past the "HB Tree" which McMillan had marked on the south bank three years earlier, anchored in deep water near the place where he had first reached the river, about thirty miles from its mouth.

On July 30, a start was made at clearing the ground for Fort Langley. The work was laborious, "from the timber being strong, and the ground completely covered with thick underwood, interwoven with Brambles & Briars",14 but by August ii one bastion was "nearly at its height", and by September 8, the picketing of the stockade was completed, the gates were hung, and two twelve-foot bastions were ready to be occupied by the "artillery". "The Tout ensemble must make a formidable enough appearance in the eyes of Indians", McMillan exulted. On November 26 a flagstaff was cut and erected in the fort's southeast corner, and the usual form of baptism gone through. To celebrate the event, the men were regaled. New Year's Day was celebrated in greater style: "Every one in high glee", wrote McMillan, "Jean Baptiste considerably elevated, and as a matter of course displaying his Manhood."

When Chief Trader Archibald McDonald arrived nine months later to take charge of the fort, he found it well fortified its size, 135 feet by 120, impressive. A small log house of two compartments housed the "gentlemen", a large building of three compartments the men; a dwelling-house with "an excellent cellar and a spacious garret" was ready for wainscoting and partitioning, and another building containing two square rooms, each with a fireplace, had an adjoining kitchen. The storehouse was "furnished with three thousand dried salmon, sixteen tierces salted ditto, thirty-six cwt. flour, two cwt. grease, and thirty bushels salt" and each of three fields had been planted with thirty bushels of potatoes.15

To examine this new post, ascertain its suitability as the main Pacific depot and determine positively whether or not the Fraser River was navigable throughout its length, Simpson, now Governor of both the Northern and Southern Departments, returned to the Columbia in 1828.

On this visit, important decisions would have to be made, for the Hudson's Bay Company's retirement from the Columbia River was now an imminent possibility. The British and American governments, having failed again to reach agreement on a suitable boundary west of the mountains, had decided in 1827 to renew indefinitely the arrangement for joint occupancy, on the understanding that either nation might terminate it on a year's notice. During the discussions, the British government, which during Canning's time had recognized the strategic importance of the Columbia River, had now seemed indifferent to its future; in contrast, the American spokesman had reflected President John Quincy Adams's feeling that the territory now becoming known as Oregon was destined by the Law of Nature to be a field for American colonization.

With the Americans showing more interest in the area, Simpson knew that the time had come to demonstrate, particularly to the Indians, the power and might of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Display and fanfare marked his westward progress. With three cheers and a salute of seven guns from the garrison, he took his leave of York Factory at one o'clock in the morning of July 12. His north canoe, one of "faultless grace and beauty", its bow "gaudily but tastefully painted",16 and its paddies vermilion red, carried a crew of nine, and as passenger, a young Highland piper, ready to play strathspeys at the Governor's pleasure. In a second canoe rode Doctor Hamiyn and Chief Trader Archibald McDonald, both on their way to stations in the Columbia Department. Neither was particularly good company for Simpson: McDonald, he found, was "not a [James] McMillan, the former is all jaw & no work the latter all work & no jaw",17 but both were useful to "watch time" so that the party might make an early morning start at two o'clock On this express journey the voyageurs, paddling until eight o'clock in the evening and making only the briefest of stops for "nooning", covered between 90 and 100 miles a day.

From Fort Chipewyan, the expedition followed Sir Alexander Mackenzie's route of 1793 to the source of the Peace River, arriving unexpectedly at Fort McLeod on September ii. There they found John Tod and his two men "on short commons, their fishery having been very uncertain throughout the summer". The overland trip of only one hundred miles to Stuart Lake took five days and proved to be "a very fatigueing part" of the journey. At the last camp, the party entertained a handful of Carrier Indians by playing the bagpipes, the bugle and "the musical box that excited their astonishment most, especially when it was made to appear to be the Governor's Dog that performed the whole secret". The next morning, the men "for the sake of the Indians" changed into their sky-blue uniforms in preparation for "an imposing entree into the Capital of Western Caledonia". Within a thousand yards of the fort, a gun was fired, the bugle sounded, and the piper commenced the march of the clans; the guide carrying the British ensign led the procession; Governor Simpson on horseback was followed by Hamlyn and McDonald on their chargers, then by twenty men carrying packs, and "Mr. McGillivray [with his wife and light infantry] closed the rear". Under "a brisk discharge of small arms and wall pieces from the Fort", the Governor was greeted by James Douglas, a young clerk who had taken charge of the post during Chief Factor Connolly's absence at Fort Vancouver.

Living conditions in New Caledonia, Simpson found, were far from satisfactory. At all the posts, fish "with an occasional treat of Berry Cake prepared by the Natives, and a Dog Feast on high Days and holydays" constituted the means of living, and McLeod's Lake seemed to him to be "the most wretched place in the Indian country". Yet however miserable these conditions, he recognized that they were "no wise to be compared" with those of the early part of the administration of John Stuart, the Nor'Wester. The annual profit from the district, he thought, could be increased from £9,000 to between £10,000 or £12,000, but not beyond.

On September 27, the party arrived at Fort Alexandria, the end of navigation. There the men divided into two groups, Simpson with Hamlyn, McDonald and two men to travel by horseback to Kamloops, and the others, under the leadership of James Murray Yale, to descend the Fraser River to its junction with the Thompson. After "a ride occupying Eight Days, and possessing all the agreeable and disagreeable varieties of Scenery & Road, which the most ardent admirer of the Wilds could desire", the "respectable cavalcade", flag flying, pipes playing, and with "much firing on both sides", was led by the indefatigable Governor at dusk into Fort Kamloops, that "very unprofitable establishment". There a boat was hastily constructed and two days later, the party embarked "in full puff" to descend the Thompson River.
At first, the going was relatively easy; then the river banks became rugged and the rapids formidable. Most of the distance to Lytton was covered in a single day, but near Lytton, the boat was nearly swamped while running one of the rapids. "The whitened countenances of the boldest amongst us," wrote Simpson, "even that of our dark Iroquois Bowsman who is nearly amphibious, shewed that we felt any thing but comfortable: indeed there was no comfort in the whole passage of this turbulent River. . . ." The Thompson River had proven unnavigable, but the Governor's hopes began to rise at Lytton where he received an encouraging report from James Murray Yale, who had descended the Fraser River from Fort Alexandria and found that its navigation required "more confidence than Skill".

After leaving Lytton, Simpson was obliged to admit defeat: "The banks now erected themselves into perpendicular Mountains of Rock from the Waters edge, the tops enveloped in clouds, and the lower parts dismal and rugged in the extreme; the descent of the Stream very rapid, the reaches short, and at the close of many of them, the Rocks, (which at times assumed singularly grotesque & fantastic shapes and at others all the different orders of architecture on a most stupendous scale) overhanging the foaming Waters, pent up, to from 20 to 30 yds. wide, running with immense velocity and momentarily threatening to sweep us to destruction." Extolling the "great exertions and unwearied perseverence" of Fraser and Stuart, Simpson regretfully concluded that "Frazers River, can no longer be thought of as a practicable communication with the interior; it was never wholly passed by water before, and in all probability never will again. . . . I shall therefore no longer talk of it as a navigable stream, altho' for years past I had flattered myself with the idea, that the loss of the Columbia would in reality be of very little consequence to the Honble. Coys. interests on this side the Continent; but to which I now, with much concern find, it would be ruinous, unless we can fall upon some other practicable route."
By the time he reached Langley, the Columbia River had taken on new significance as arterial highway to the Interior, as provisioning centre and as window on the Pacific. Fort Langley, instead of becoming the major depot on the Pacific, would have to be relegated to the position of a mere coastal establishment.

Instead of returning to Kamloops to travel the Okanagan Valley route to Fort Okanogan, as he had intended, Governor Simpson proceeded direct by boat to Fort Vancouver. There he found that much progress had been made since his first visit and that Dr. McLoughlin had zealously carried out his orders. The post had a herd of over i50 cattle, and its farm lands produced good crops of corn, wheat, barley, peas, oats and potatoes. The small staff of twenty men, about half the size of the North West Company's original complement at Fort George, had built a flour-mill and a sawmill and had constructed two small vessels.

At Fort Vancouver, Simpson turned his attention to the coastal trade, but not before he had received a full briefing on all the obstacles impeding its development. During the last phase of the War of 1812, the British blockade of American ports had reduced the number of Yankee peddlers visiting the North West Coast. Now they were back in greater force and doing a lively commerce in the ports of South America, California, the Sandwich Islands, the Dutch East Indies and Russian Alaska. In the Canton trade, they were more strongly entrenched than ever before; in addition to supplying the fur mart, they were importing sandalwood from the Sandwich Islands. Every season they plied the waters north of the Columbia River looking for the now scarce sea otter and picking up quantities of land furs, for despite the provisions of the Russo-American agreement of 1824, they were trafficking with the Indians in arms, ammunition and liquor. Their scarlet blankets and other trading goods often excelled British manufactures in appeal, and since they made high profits from freighting and exchanging cheap goods for luxury articles on voyages that lasted three years, they could afford to reduce their tariff. Importing its trading goods directly from England, and having only furs to carry back, the Hudson's Bay Company had much higher costs, and nothing but a monopoly of the fur trade would make its Operations profitable. Rather than abandon the field, it adopted delaying tactics, meeting American competition at American prices, even though, as Archibald McDonald complained: "1000 Blkts: will Only draw 1000 Beaver in these days".18

In the interval between Governor Simpson's two visits in 1824 and 1828, the Company had endeavoured to secure per-mission from the East India Company to trade directly with Canton. Neither this attempt nor the endeavour to open other Asian markets had succeeded, and after 1828 all shipments of furs were directed to London. With prices on the London market rising, Simpson was no longer greatly concerned about these failures, but he was determined to do what he could to liberate the coastal trade in land furs from the American grip and to make a bid for the supply trade with the northern Russian posts.

McLoughlin's efforts along these lines had been frustrated by shortage of supplies, lack of shipping, and the indifference or the insubordination of the captains of the Company's supply

ships. In what was supposed to be a reconnaissance cruise of the northern seacoast in 1825 the captain of the William and Ann had spared himself the trouble of obtaining the information which the Hudson's Bay Company needed, but he had, on his return, relayed from a friendly American sea captain a report which led McLoughlin to conclude that Nass River was the great centre of the trade in land furs. Although this was still not substantiated, Simpson hoped that the Nass River might offer a new route from the seacoast to New Caledonia and impelled by his desire to maintain monopoly rights on the North West Coast, made plans to build a post there.

To the Governor of the Russian-American Company at Sitka he sent notice of the Hudson's Bay Company's entry into the coastal trade and an offer to provision the Russian posts at low prices with imported English goods and agricultural produce from Fort Vancouver. This overture, intended as an invitation to joint effort against the American traders, was not taken up by the Russians, and the Hudson's Bay Company was then left to devise its own methods for meeting American competition.
During his winter at Fort Vancouver, Simpson, with the advice and co-operation of McLoughlin, worked out the details of the Company's new policy. To put this on a proper basis, he reported to the Governor and Committee, more ships were needed; to keep these ships fully employed, the Company could use them during "the dead season" to carry salmon to California and lumber to the Sandwich Islands. McLoughlin soon ceased to share the Governor's enthusiasm for trading-vessels: his experience during the next few years convinced him that the coastal trade could best be developed by trading establishments.

On parting, neither man knew that for the next eight years the Chief Factor, this "very bustling active man",19 would have no Opportunity for direct consultation with the higher officers of the Company, and that Governor Simpson himself be unable to return to the Columbia Department until 1841. Unaware of the measure of independence he would attain, McLoughlm was left with the responsibility of organizing the new branch of the Company's trade.

At first, his plans went awry. In March, 1829, almost on the eve of Governor Simpson's departure, the inward-bound supply ship, William and Ann, which Simpson had decided to substitute in the coastal trade for the small and vulnerable Cadboro, was wrecked on the bar of the Columbia River, and her crew and cargo were lost. In 1830, the Columbia bar took another toll: the supply ship Isabella. Finally, in 1831, Lieutenant Aemilius Simpson, R.N., went north in the Cadboro, and with the assistance of Peter Skene Ogden, founded Fort Simpson. The location proved difficult of access for sailing-vessels, and three years later the post was moved from the Nass River to the present Port Simpson on the Tsimpsean Peninsula.

In 1833, McLoughlin added two new posts along the seacoast: Fort McLoughlin on Milbanke Sound near Bella Bella, and a southern shipping and provisioning depot, Fort Nisqually, at the end of Puget Sound near the Cowlitz River route to Fort Vancouver. The site for a third post, one on the Stikine River beyond Russia's territorial ten-mile limit, was selected, but when Ogden went north in the Dryad in the spring of 1834, he found the Russians blocking the river with a gunboat under the protection of a fort which they had constructed during the previous winter. "I trust John Bull will answer these hairy beasts in their own way and see justice done to the loyal and dutiful sublects of his Britanic majesty", wrote one indignant furtrader.20 On receiving McLoughlin's estimate of £22,150 for loss of business, the Hudson's Bay Company, using tactics reminiscent of those of John Meares, pressed for compensation and enlisted the services of the Foreign Office. This diplomatic support proved useful in preparing the way for the advantageous agreement made in 1839 with the Russian-American Company.

As Superintendent of the Columbia Department, McLoughlin introduced his own improvisations into the Company's policies. When Lieutenant Simpson died soon after founding the post on the Nass River, the Chief Factor abolished the office of Marine Superintendent which Governor Simpson had created, and turned over to Ogden the management of the post and its marine trade. In 1832, when the schooner Vancouver ran ashore and was severely damaged, McLoughlin sent Chief Factor Duncan Finlayson to Honolulu to procure another ship, using in part the credits built up by the Company's export trade. When Finlayson purchased the American brig Lama and engaged her commander, Captain W. H. McNeill, a Bostonian with experience in the American interloping trade, Mclougliljn approved Finlayson's action. To meet American competition, he permitted, in violation of the Company's rules and of international agreement, sales of arms, ammunition and liquor to the Indians. The strategy of matching American prices, or undercut them, he took for granted.

To one decision which was made for him, he took violent exception. In what he must have regarded later as an considered proposal, he had suggested in 1827 that a steamboat be sent to the Pacific Coast. The idea appealed to Simpson: in August, 1832, he pointed out to the Governor and Committee that a steam vessel "would afford us incalculable advantages over the Americans, as we could look into every Creek and cove while they were confined to a harbour by head winds and calms . . . a Steam Vessel would, in our Opinion, bring the contest to a close very soon, by making us masters of the trade".21 Two years later, the Governor and Committee acted on this suggestion and placed the order for construction of a paddle-wheel steamer of two engines, each of 35 horsepower.

The Beaver, in the company of the new barque Columbia, supply ship for the Columbia Department, left Gravesend in August, 1835, to sail round Cape Horn to the Sandwich Islands and on to Fort Vancouver to be fitted as a steamer. On June 18, 1836, the pioneer steamboat on the Pacific Coast left the depot, never, because of the dangerous Columbia bar, to return. Even before he saw her, McLoughlin was convinced that she was an expensive luxury; his suspicion was increased when on her first trading cruise to Fort McLoughlin and Fort Simpson she took along a crew of 31, including four stokers and thirteen woodcutters, finding use for the services of all as she voraciously 26 cords of wood every three or four days.22 But although he would not admit it, the ugly little tramp with her protective sides, her single black funnel and her side-wheels, proved her worth by skillfully negotiating narrow channel,(establishing on her first cruise the truth of Indian reports coal deposits at the northern end of Vancouver Island) and greatly impressing the natives, who thought that "she could do any thing but speak; and the white man must have been assisted in the work by the Great Spirit".28

In addition to issuing instructions to the captain of the Beaver, McLoughlin directed the work of the six large vessels which the Company employed in the coastal trade in 1836. Already there were indications that his competitive trading policies were successful and that not for long would his traders stand helplessly by, as they had at the close of the season of 1835, watching an American sea captain debase prices by selling "a swivil gun for a beaver; a ship's cooking Camboose [stove] half worn for 2; a Metal Scabbard Sabre for 1; a 30 gall: cask of Molasses pure for 3 beaver; a 30 gall: cask of rice for 5; a 100 lb. Cask of fine bread for 3; an i8 gall: cask of Malaga wine for 3; an 18 gall: cask of brandy for 3..." and paying four dollars and four yards of fine calico each for a number of beaver peltries.24 The combination of permanent coastal trading-centres and good shipping was increasing the flow of returns, and each year the Company's supply ships returned to England with larger cargoes of furs.

Outwitting American traders, as McLoughlin could appreciate, provided the men engaged in the coastal trade with plenty of diversion during the summer months; the winter occupations of the two or three "gentlemen" and the half-dozen French Canadians and half-breeds stationed permanently at the northern posts were less absorbing. During these months, their duties were light, and almost nothing happened to give any day particular interest. The climate was dismal; day after day, the fog drifted in; for weeks on end torrential rain fell from leaden skies, and when the sun broke through, the only recreation was strolling on the rocky beach or on the trails cut through the deep forest. Young William Fraser Tolmie, graduate in medicine from Glasgow University, did his best to keep his spirits up by reading and re-reading the little stock of books on hand at Fort McLoughlin, but after a year of the life, he noted in his diary: "Since coming here what most frequently has been a matter of cogitation, is the dullness of this place & of life in the 'Pays Sauvage' in general".25

To these lonely men, longing for news, former associates wrote long letters. McLoughlin also wrote to them; but at Fort Vancouver, he was more than busy with his correspondence with higher officials and with other subordinates. For in addition to supervising the coastal trade, he kept careful watch over the multifarious activities in the immense Columbia Department and over the affairs of New Caledonia.

This district, for purposes of administration, finance and supply, had been attached to the Columbia Department, and McLoughlin shared with its Chief Factor responsibility for the efficient functioning of its transport system. Simpson's prediction that the trade could not be too greatly expanded turned out to be true. For many years it returned profits of £10,000, but with each passing year the Indians brought in fewer beaver. The most noticeable decline was at Fort Kamloops, where as early as 1827, Archibald McDonald reported that "a person can walk for days together without seeing the smallest quadruped, the little brown squirrel excepted",26 and in 1844 John Tod lamented, "There appears to be no longer any prospect of either profit or pleasure here."27 But as a divisional point on the great interior brigade route, this post, as Simpson had noted, was worth retaining, and its importance as a stock-raising centre became yearly more evident.

The brigade route blazed in the spring of 1826 through the Okanagan Valley to Fort Kamloops and north to Alexandria was still in use, no shorter route having been discovered from the northern seacoast. Fort Alexandria, its most northerly transfer point, was the paradise of New Caledonia. The post was situated in lightly wooded, rolling country where there was shooting and fishing and where good crops of grain and vegetables could be grown if the frosts did not come too early. Here, to reduce dependence on Fort Colvile, Peter Skene Ogden built the first flour-mill in British Columbia.

Farther north, at Fort George, at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers, there were cattle, but the grain crops were poor and the hope that "Pancakes and hot rolls were . . . to be the order of the day: Babine salmon and dog's flesh were to be sent-'to Coventry' ",28 failed to materialize. Conditions at Fort McLeod remained almost unchanged: "A more dreary situation can scarcely be imagined", wrote one fur-trader, "surrounded by towering mountains that almost exclude the light of day, and snow storms not seldom occurring, so violent and long continued as to bury the establishment."29 John Tod, left to languish here for nine years through incurring Governor Simpson's displeasure, lost facility in the use of his own language, and returned to York Factory speaking "a linguistic 'stew', made of bits of Scotch, French and Indian dialects, thickened with what seemed to be English."30

Everywhere in New Caledonia, except at Fort Alexandria, there was "the same miserable solitude" and little to do but read and re-read the few books and the occasional English periodical that came to hand. But sometimes life was brightened, as it was in 1833 at Fort St. James, when Chief Factor Peter Warren Dease, soon to become famous for Arctic exploration, wintered there and arranged "musical Soirees". During that winter there was also chess, backgammon, whist and spinning of yarns about "dog racing, canoe sailing, and l'amour; sometimes politics; now and then an animated discussion on theology, but without bitterness…",31 as well as a feast given by the great chief of the Carriers, Kwah, at which the main dishes were roasted bear, beaver and marmot; berries mixed with rancid salmon oil; and fish roe that had been buried underground a twelvemonth.

Peter Skene Ogden, veteran of the five great Snake River trapping expeditions and inaugurator of the coastal trade, came to reside at Fort St. James in 1835 on his promotion to Chief Factor in charge of New Caledonia. This man, whose reliability was unquestioned, had earned the right to lighter duty. His long and harrowing years in the fur trade had sobered him, although he still enjoyed playing practical jokes. Twenty years earlier, as a young Nor'Wester, he had been known as "the humorous, honest, eccentric, law-defying Peter Ogden, the terror of Indians, and the delight of all gay fellows";82 now he was "a vigilant guardian of his corporation's interests".33
Each year Ogden led the brigade to Fort Vancouver. From Stuart Lake, he travelled with the canoes to Fort George on the upper Fraser, picked up the furs, and proceeded down the Fraser River to Fort Alexandria. There his pack-horses, each carrying two "pieces" of 84 pounds, started Out for Fort Kamloops, sometimes accompanying and sometimes following the brigade from that district to Fort Okanogan. At Fort Okanogan there was a general rendezvous of the New Caledonia, Thompson River and Fort Colvile brigades; then, under the charge of a senior officer who knew the dangerous rapids, the united brigade made the hazardous boat run to Fort Vancouver, arnving about June 15.

After spending a month collecting supplies, Ogden began the twenty-day return trip by boat to Fort Okanogan. From there the Fort Kamloops and the New Caledonia outfits started overland, every horse of the 200 or 300 in the train "in his full beauty of form and color, and all so tractable".84 At Fort Alexandria, supplies were packaged for each northern post, and Ogden's canoe brigade started the twenty-day trip north to Fort St. James. From there, the "goods in" were distributed by "large and small canoes, Horses, Dog Sleds and Men's Backs".35

In spite of all his efforts, Ogden could not make his posts self-supporting, and each year he packed in provisions and urged attention to the fishery. But if diversification failed in New Caledonia, the same was not true at Fort Langley. There, from the moment of his arrival, Archibald McDonald had realized the value of the salmon fishery and had seen the possibilities of developing an export trade. Fish were so abundant that they could be obtained from the Indians for "Vermilion, Rings and other Trifles"36 and the cooper brought from England found ample resources for manufacturing barrel-staves. But salt had to be imported, and it took much experimentation to find a method of preservation which assured that the fish arrived in foreign markets in good condition. Shipments to England were disappointingly unsuccessful; but salted salmon carried well as far as the Sandwich Islands, and there a growing market developed.

The value of its fishery, both for provisioning the Company's posts and expanding its export trade, saved Fort Langley. More suitable sites for a coastal depot on Whidbey Island and on Lulu Island were considered, but to preserve the salmon trade, Dr. McLoughlin urged the retention of Langley.

The Company's desire for a Pacific depot that would be more accessible to sea-going ships also threatened the abandonment of McLoughlin's beloved Fort Vancouver. To him, there could be no location more suitable for "the grand mart" and as base for the interior trade, and no situation more beautiful. His pride was often echoed by visitors, particularly by those who arrived in the spring. On the edge of the "noble woods", they found masses of tall lupins and camas lilies, and in the farm gardens "young apples . . . in rich blossom & extensive beds sowed with culinary vegetables . . . laid out in nice order".87 But to Governor Simpson, Fort Vancouver was objectionable on account of the dangers of the Columbia bar; and to Directors of the Company, reports of outbreaks of intermittent fever indicated that the site was unhealthy. In the summer of 1837, Captain W. H. McNeill, acting on instructions, examined the coast and the islands inside the Strait of Juan de Fuca for a new site. His report on Victoria harbour impressed James Douglas: "I am persuaded that no part of this sterile & Bock bound Coast will be found better adapted for the site of the proposed Depot or to combine, in a higher degree, the desired requisites, of a secure harbour accessible to shipping at every season, of good pasture, and, to a certain extent, of improvable tillage lands".38 Fort Adelaide was the name first chosen by the Governor and Committee for the proposed depot, but construction was apparently delayed until after consultation with Dr. McLoughlin.

Summoned to London to give a fuller report on the difficulties experienced with the Russians on the Stikine River, McLoughlin left Fort Vancouver in March, 1838, turning over to Douglas, soon to be promoted to Chief Factor, responsibility for the management of Fort Vancouver, and of the lower Columbia establishments and the coastal trade.

For too long, both for the Company's sake and his own, McLoughlin had been out of touch with its officers. The East India Company had already lost its privileges in the China trade, and both in England and in Lower Canada feeling was mounting against the other great monopoly. Before antagonism became too apparent, the Hudson's Bay Company pressed the British government to extend its licence of exclusive trade in the "Indian Territory" for another period of twenty-one years. Simpson's report contrasting "the happiness that was every where felt" with the "drunkenness, murder and general demoralization which had formerly existed",89 helped it to achieve its purpose.

In his relations with retired Company servants who wanted to turn to farming, and with American trappers, hunters and settlers, McLoughlin had already displayed a humanitarianism difficult to reconcile with the philosophy of the Company. Simpson had come to the conclusion that he "would be a Radical in any Country under any Government and under any circumstances".40 Visitors to Fort Vancouver were struck by the fact that he was "an able politician", craving information about "the political intelligence of Europe",41 and expressing an interest in popular government. Meeting his old friend John Tod at Norway House in the course of his journey to Montreal, McLaughlin "talked incessantly all the while on the late events of Canada", and made no secret of the fact that "he was strenuous in support of that arch rebel Peppeneau & his party".42 Such a sentiment would hardly find favour with the authoritarian and autocratic Simpson, whose support of the Crown at the time of "the troubles" helped him to earn the knighthood which he received in 1841.

McLaughlin, with his lively interest in current affairs, undoubtedly noted during his brief stay in New York en route to London the effects of the Panic of 1837, which had not yet subsided. In 1838, American newspapers were reporting farm prices depressed and western land values low, and, echoing the clamour of the restless frontiersmen, they were agitating for free land grants in Oregon, already considered by many nationalists to be American territory. For some years now, returning American missionaries and journalists had been publicizing the Eden of the West, and a Missourian, Senator Linn, had aleady introduced into Congress a bill to organize Oregon as an Amen-can territory.

In London and in Paris, McLaughlin could find another portent: the trend in men's fashions was changing. The beaver felt hat, popular with members of polite society since the days of Charles II, was yielding favour to the Florentine silk topper. If the fashion caught on, the Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay would find their sales of beaver skins considerably diminished.

The business which brought McLoughlin to London was soon resolved. Negotiations at St. Petersburg had already been conducted at a high level; in the spring of 1839 they were brought to a successful conclusion at a private meeting in Hamburg between Governor Simpson and Baron Ferdinand Wrangell of the Russian-American Company. When the English company dropped its claim for indemnity in the Dryad affair, the Russian American Company consented to lease its coastal strip south of Mount Fairweather and to transfer its post at the mouth of the Stikine Biver to the Hudson's Bay Company. For its part, the Hudson's Bay Company undertook to provide the Russian posts with supplies of food, thus ending their dependence on American sources and on their California post. Now the two great monopolies would work hand in hand; at last the Americans would be driven from the North West Coast.

But the price of victory on the seacoast was the expansion of farming and the introduction of settlement inland. To fill its Russian contract, the Hudson's Bay Company, modifying an earlier suggestion of Dr. McLoughlin, established a subsidiary organization, the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, to undertake large-scale farming operations at Fort Nisqually and in the nearby Cowlitz Valley. Old fur4raders saw the writing on the wall; the problems of the "Mutton company" and of retired Company servants brought in from Red River to found a colony north of the Columbia and to engage in farming, evoked none of their sympathy. "Do not . . . my friend suppose that I am myself Smitten with this colonization mania of ours", wrote Archibald McDonald. "That a large population may in course of time Spring up over that country I do not at all doubt, but with one eye one can see the motley crew of which it must necessarily be composed: it will be of every cast and hue into which the naturalist has subdivided the three primary branches that first peopled mother earth".48

Plunging into a welter of business arrangements on his return in October, 1839, "the old Doctor", whose equanimity was now easily upset and temper quickly aroused, tackled them with less order and energy than Simpson, who was bent on efficiency, expected. Late in the year, McLoughlin took a brief look at Victoria harbour, but dismissed it as unsuitable as a site for a depot. In the spring of 1840, he sent Douglas north to take over the Stikine post and to build Fort Taku in Alaska. In December, he sent him to California to trade and to buy live stock. From this trip, Douglas returned to advise purchase of property for a mercantile establishment at Yerba Buena in the port of San Francisco, and the Chief Factor, interested in developing a trade in hides and tallow, although he knew that Simpson was on his way to Fort Vancouver and could soon be consulted in the matter, took the fateful step of completing the purchase.

"With a dashing train of Knights and squires of various diguus",44 Sir George, as he had recently become, arrived at Fort Vancouver on August 25. There Douglas received him, "Mr. McLaughlin, the gentleman in charge", as Simpson put it, "being absent at Puget Sound".45 The Governor rested Only a week; then he was off to inspect the new Company farms in the Olympic Peninsula and the northern coastal posts. The Beaver picked him up at Fort Nisqually. As he sailed across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, he found the scenery delightful, and noted that the southern tip of Vancouver Island was "well adapted for colonization; for in addition to a tolerable soil and a moderate climate, it possesses excellent harbours and abundance of timber. It will doubtless become, in time, the most valuable section of the whole coast above California".46

His brief stay in the north confirmed his expectations: the Americans had been driven from the coastal trade, and retrenchment was possible. Abruptly, and without consulting McLoughlin, he reversed the policy which the Chief Factor had developed over a period of fifteen years. All the northern posts except a supply depot at Fort Simpson were to be closed: the Beaver would do their work.

On this, his last inspection trip to the Columbia Department, Sir George was on a journey round the world, and had little time to spare. "I may remark that he at least forms an exception from the general rule 'that great bodies move slow'", commented John Tod.47 But before he started across Siberia, Simpson wanted to see his whole Pacific empire, stretching from Alaska in the north to the ports of San Francisco and Honolulu in the south. In other parts of his dominions his problems were harassing: the opposition of Quebec merchants to any extension of the term of the Company's trading rights was arousing a Canadian protest, and as the rebellions of 1837 had indicated, Canadians were only too anxious to reject entrenched economic or political privilege. The presence of free-traders in the Red River valley was also an increasing embarrassment and warning that American enterprise would not be contained by political boundaries. On the Pacific slope, the problems were unique and even more complex.

Twice before, companies operating on what was almost a continental scale had attempted to unite the land and the marine trade. Astor's effort had been doomed to failure by the inadequate equipment of his Pacific base with personnel, supplies and trading goods. The North West Company had been brought close to disaster by extravagance, competition inland, lack 6f coastal bases and inability to trade directly with Canton. It was too soon for Simpson to tell if he had made the wrong decisions in adopting policies of stringent economy and reduction of personnel, of expanded capital investment in shipping and in coastal establishments, and of diversification of operations. Was it possible that the Hudson's Bay Company had relied too heavily on the Foreign Office for support of its economic position in the zone between 54º40' and 42º, and that it had not made a sufficiently great effort to maintain for itself a position of strength in the Columbia basin? Now that American settlers, "the swarm of American adventurers and vagarants",48 as Archibald McDonald disparagingly called them, were establishing themselves in the Willamette Valley and south of Walla Walla, would Oregon, as Simpson feared California was likely to, become another Texas? If the new British colony in the Cowlitz Valley, north of the Columbia, was not strong enough to maintain a British claim to the ports of Puget Sound, would it be wise to strengthen the foothold north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca?

With time at a premium, it was more than irritating to "His Excellency", Governor-in-Chief of all the Hudson's Bay Territories in North America, that following his inspection of the settlement in the Willamette Valley, he should have been detained three weeks in crossing the Columbia bar. He experienced further annoyance in California, where the authorities proved to be far less willing to permit free entry of goods into their ports than Douglas had led McLoughlin to believe. By the time Sir George reached Honolulu to visit the Company's agency and to hold his final consultations with McLaughlin, who had accompanied him to the Hawaiian Islands, he was in no mood for argument.

Dr. McLoughlin's unwillingness to accept his decision to close the northern seacoast establishments Simpson found exasperating; the endless denials of mismanagement of coastal and shipping policies, tiresome; the attempt to justify the reckless expenditure of money for property in California, reprehensible. Then, a few months later, occurred the tragedy which made their reconciliation impossible.

In April, 1842, John McLaughlin, junior, a reckless and unreliable young man who, because of adjustments in staff made by Simpson, had been left in charge of Fort Stikine, was murdered. The Governor returned from Honolulu just in time to send the first report of his death to the Chief Factor:
McLoughlin's son had fallen "in a drunken fray, by the hand of one of his own men"; Simpson himself had apprehended the suspected murderer and turned him over to the Russian authorities; in his opinion the verdict could only be "Justifiable Homicide".49

The old Doctor never forgave Simpson this callousness. Worse, to the Company itself he transferred a growing resentment soon to develop into almost an antipathy. He was wounded by the London Committee's criticism of his extension of credits to impoverished American settlers and by probes into the purpose and nature of his investments at Oregon City. His attention occupied by fast-moving events: the migration of Red River settlers to the Cowlitz Valley; the visit of Commodore Charles Wilkes and his squadron of five American ships; the arrival of new "Labourers in the Vineyard", including "another swarm of Jesuites, now as thick as blackberries";50 the appearance of more American settlers, considered by Archibald McDonald to be "Senator Linn's military colonists", he was unable to forestall the establishment of an American provisional government south of the Columbia. His son-in-law's suicide in 1845 at Yerba Buena, which, defiantly, McLoughlin had refused to close, he attributed to the Company's niggardly support of the California post.

In addition to all these personal griefs and disappointments, the "Great White-Headed Eagle" had been required to carry out instructions for which he had no liking. The northern posts which he had established had now to be dismantled, and the new southern depot built.

In the summer of 1842, Chief Factor James Douglas, McLaughlin's assistant at Fort Vancouver, had chosen the port of Camosack on the southern tip of Vancouver Island for the new post. "The place itself appears a perfect 'Eden', in the midst of the dreary wilderness of the North west coast", wrote Douglas, "and so different is its general aspect, from the wooded, rugged regions around, that one might be pardoned for supposing it had dropped from the clouds into its present position".51 On March 13, 1843, he arrived in the Beaver off Clover Point to select the precise site. A few weeks later, the Council of the Northern Department decided to name what was intended to be a large new depot in honour of Queen Victoria.

Under the pressure of conflicting national interests, Fort Langley, a lower Fraser valley outpost, and Victoria, an island seaport, had, quite suddenly, acquired strategic and commercial importance. Only twenty-two years before, when the Hudson's Bay Company had absorbed the property and personnel of the North West Company, New Caledonia, the fur-trading district lying north of Fort Alexandria, had been its richest territory west of the mountains, and the solution of New Caledonia's transport problem had been the Company's most immediate concern in the Far West. Within a decade, this district had become subordinate to the Columbia Department, a huge territory comprising the present states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Montana, Utah and southern British Columbia. In this area, the Company for long maintained its hold by monopolizing the sale of European goods to the Indians, providing the only market for their furs, and making the Snake, and to a lesser extent, the Sacramento Valley, fur deserts.

Yet despite its experience and ingenuity, the great Bay company had been unable to prevent extension of the American economic frontier. American hunters, trappers and settlers knew that their government had inherited Spanish claims in the Pacific Northwest, and that the British government had recognized their right to trade west of the mountains. So they had moved into the fur preserve. The Hudson's Bay Company first found itself losing its "freemen" to the employ of fur-traders from St. Louis, and then assisting starving American squatters by extension of credit and purchase of crops. Finally, it was unable to discourage the fervour and enthusiasm of American missionaries, come to found in Oregon a New Jerusalem. By the early 40'S, wagon loads of immigrants from Iowa and Missouri were moving slowly over the long trail to the Columbia.

From the North West Company, the Hudson's Bay Company had inherited a partly navigable, partly overland, transportation route to the northern interior; an oceanic supply route; and a maritime trade centred in northern islands and deep inlets. To protect all of these, it had reduced competition on the seacoast to the minimum. To maintain them all profitably, it had diversified its operations. But the emphasis in this diversification had been on agriculture.

Throughout the whole period, the eyes of the Bay men had remained fixed on London, their traditional mart. Trans-Pacific trade to Canton had not been established; and neither the California nor the Hawaiian market had been greatly expanded. All the time, American peddlers had been busy shuttling from Pacific port to Pacific port, laying the foundations for stepping-stones to the Orient and preparing to open a new and undeveloped market in Japan.

Now whole areas were denuded of beaver and marten, and London could no longer pay the old prices. Chief Factors and Chief Traders noticed the difference when they received their share of the annual dividends. Times were changing, as one discerning Chief Factor noted in a letter to a friend: "Something must be wrong in the state of Denmark, or else the Fur Trade is d-m--d fallen never to rise again & to mend the matter it would appear that master Jonathan is likely to have a fine Slice from us, if they get the line of 49 our Columbia is dished, what then will become of all the great doings of late years on that side the Mountains".52