Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/726

Rh might be trouble at home. Under all the circumstances, Douglas did what was undoubtedly the wisest thing; he accepted the security of the governor and two of the commissioners, Applegate and Lovejoy and advanced the means to equip and put in the field the first company of Oregon riflemen, at a cost of about a thousand dollars.

On obtaining these supplies, the volunteers proceeded without unnecessary delay to the Dalles, where they were to remain in charge of the mission property until reënforced.

But one company of less than fifty men could not make war upon several powerful tribes, likely to combine at the first intimation of hostilities on the part of the Americans. The business of the loan commissioners was, therefore, only begun. On the 13th of December they addressed a letter to the merchants and citizens of Oregon, in very much the same language in which they had addressed the Hudson's Bay Company.

The success attending the labors of the commissioners was entirely inadequate to the demand for means to put in the field five hundred men in the winter season, the amount secured being only $3,600,