Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/469

418 medium of payment for labor or property. Should the merchant's stock be low, the holder of the order either took what he could get, or else waited. None but the Hudson's Bay Company kept an assortment of general merchandise. The vessels from Boston and New York were freighted with goods of one or two classes, while from the Islands only a few articles could be obtained. There were silly fanatics—self-sacrificing patriots, they imagined themselves—who, to encourage American and discourage British trade, would have nothing to do with the company, and these were put to severe tests. Sometimes it was sugar, tea, coffee, or salt they had to do without; and again not a yard of cotton goods or a half-dozen cups and saucers could be obtained. This being the condition of the market in Oregon City, if a man required a certain article he must take furs or wheat to Vancouver, or he must ask credit at that place till a crop could be raised. But if a stock of the current year was already exhausted, the rules of the company did not allow of opening the next year's stock before the arrival of the annual supplies, lest by the loss of a vessel there should be a dearth in the country or a long period. The wants of the immigration of 1843 produced the effect of a vessel's loss on the company's stores, by exhausting the goods on hand.

Why it was that none of the immigrants foresaw the circumstances in which they were to be placed, is a question that has never been answered. I think, however, that it is possible to solve it. None of them realized the distance of the Willamette Valley beyond the Rocky Mountains. As Edwards wrote to Bacon, many imagined that all they had to do after reaching Snake River was to embark upon its waters and float down to the mouth of the Columbia. In-