Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/115

 The party of five led by Reed and Mackenzie had succeeded better than all the others. By pushing down the east side of the Snake while they were fresh and strong they got past the worst of the mountains before the snows fell on them; crossed over Salmon river, and down the long ridge over the great Florence gold mine deposits, on down to Camas prairie where the town of Grangeville now flourishes, and on down to the towns of the Nez Perce Indians. Here they were received as friends and all their wants for food freely and fully supplied; and when rested and recuperated. were furnished with canoes on which they floated down the Clearwater to the Snake, and down the Snake to the great Columbia, and down the Columbia to Astoria where they were the first of the Hunt party to report for duty, reaching Fort Astoria on the 18th of January, 1812.

Returning again to Hunt where he was left with the Indians on the Umatilla on the 8th of January, we find him busy repairing damages and getting horses and provisions to push on down the river. On January 20th, Hunt and his remaining men left the Umatilla on horses and pushed on to The Dalles, and there getting canoes from the Indians at once dropped down the Columbia where they all arrived on the 15th of February, 1812. having been ten months lacking fivedays since they broke camp on the Missouri river for their world-renowned trip across the western wilderness of America. Counting the crooks and bends of their route they traveled over thirty-five hundred miles in ten months of hardships and perils unparalleled in the history of the world. The two parties met at Astoria with inexpressible joy. and the bronzed heroes of the mountains embraced each other with tears and kisses like children.

The War of 1812 with England breaking out soon after, and before any sufficient effort could be made to prove the practical success of the enterprise, and while Mr. Hunt was absent to Alaska on a trading expedition with the Beaver—a second ship that Astor had sent out with supplies and men—two of Astor's partners, Macdougall and MacTavish, turned traitor to the enterprise and sold it out to the Canadian Company for fifty-eight thousand dollars, property which had cost Astor over two hundred and fifty thousand, together with a large amount of furs that had been accumulated. They had not only betrayed and robbed their partner of his property in the absence of his American agent, but they conspired to turn the fort and all its property and advantages over to the British government, prohibiting the young American employees from raising the stars and stripes over their own fort. The whole disgraceful chapter of treachery and dishonesty to Astor and enmity to the United States ending with the seizure of the fort by the British man-of-war Raccoon, on December 1, 1813

This chapter of perfidy to Astor and seizure of an American fort and commercial post, practically put an end to all American settlement in Oregon for thirty years. There were independent American trappers who sold their furs to the Hudson's Bay Company, which succeeded the Canadian Company, but there was not a single American trading post. merchant or establishment in all Oregon that dared fly the American flag until Joe Meek. led off at Champoeg, in an appeal to "Rally around the flag, boys." in 1843.

After the ruin of the Astoria enterprise, Russell Farnham, one of Astor's men, conferred with Wilson Price Hunt and it was agreed between them that Farnham should undertake to get back to New York by crossing the Pacific ocean and making his way across Siberia and Russia to Europe. This trip around the