Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/301

250 The year 1841 was remarkable for brief visits of exploration, rather than for any enlargement of the American colony. While Wilkes was still at Fort Vancouver, Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company's territories in North America, arrived at that post, having travelled from Montreal in twelve weeks, the whole journey being made in canoe and saddle. The principal objects of his visit to the coast were the inspection of the fort at Stikeen, leased from the Russian American Company, and the establishment of a post at San Francisco. After spending a week at Vancouver he proceeded to Stikeen, and was back again at the fort by the 22d of October.

Almost simultaneously with Sir George's return to Vancouver, the French explorer Duflot de Mofras arrived at that post from the Hawaiian Islands in the company's bark Cowlitz. In 1839 Mofras, then an attaché of the French embassy at Madrid, had been sent by his government to join the legation at Mexico with special instructions to visit the north-western portion of Mexico, together with California and Oregon, to report on their accessibility to French commerce, and to learn something of the geography of the country. Such, at least, was the ostensible purpose of Mofras mission, though there were some who suspected him of playing the spy for his government. Sir George was of this opinion, and he took no pains to conceal it, which so hurt the Frenchman's amour propre that he insisted upon paying for his passage in the Cowlitz and defraying all other personal expenses. Nevertheless it is possible that Simpson's apprehensions were not wholly groundless, at all events so far as Mofras' personal sentiments were concerned; for the latter in his writings concludes a discussion of the Oregon Question with the hope that the French Canadians might throw off the hated English yoke and