Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/625

574 position of affairs, that an agent was sent in March, by the fur company, to San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands, to make arrangements for obtaining supplies for the Hudson's Bay Company's posts, in case their farming lands should be seized. The Russians also, who depended on Oregon for the larger part of their supplies, anticipating trouble, forestalled the action of the British company, and purchased, early in the spring, the whole tara crop of the Islands, and large quantities of sugar and rum, for Sitka.

Everything in the Pacific seemed to point to an early collision. The Modeste, as a British man-of-war stationed in the Columbia, was regarded ominously, and to soften the resentment thus created, the officers and men, following the advice of the fur company, gave a series of entertainments, to which all were invited, which served the purpose of diverting the minds of many from that strained feeling which McKay says obtained between the rival nations, perceptible even in the Sandwich Islands. A better acquaintance enabled men of either nation to express political bias freely, and wordy encounters were harmless, as there were no offensive exhibitions of patriotism.