Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/287

236 ada were extended over British subjects in the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, but this was never enforced so far as Russians or Americans were concerned. Even a Canadian could not be dealt with in Russian territory. But jealousy of the Canadian jurisdiction led the Americans to appoint as justice of the peace among themselves, in 1838, David Leslie. So that without any legal authority whatever Leslie was dispensing justice in the Willamette Valley at the very time that he and Farnham complained that there was a justice of the peace at Fort Vancouver, in what the company held to be British territory, and he actually tried a British subject for theft not long after.

Farnham's report on the country itself was not pleasing to the colonists, who spoke of him with disrespect after the publication of his Travels. He disparaged the climate, which was too dry in eastern and too moist in western Oregon; he found the forests, where they existed, too heavy, and in other places not heavy enough; and the mouth of the Columbia unfit for the purposes of commerce. Holding these opinions, it is no wonder that he departed from the country without attempting to carry out the purposes for which the Peoria company was formed.