Page:Letters to Mrs. F. F. Victor, 1878-83.djvu/15

 ments for defining the positions of the places he visited. I used to help him at Vancouver, or perhaps I should say he kindly intended to furbish up my school acquirements—for I witsh a doen other boys had been sent from the Greenwich naval schools to be reared for the Company's coast service—about that time the HBCo were anoyed by American traders who used to take goods to the Russians & there peddled for furs with the refuse & liquor. To put down this trade the Co required permanent posts along the coast and a number of fast schooners which they proposed to build here. Capt [Aemilius] Simpson a Lieut in the R. N. [retired] was super intending when he died at Ft. Simpson on Nass River in 1831. The Co built one schooner & gave up building. She was an expensive failure—the sailors used to declare they could stow 6 Bbls more on one side of the mast than on the other. She was lost on Pt Rose spit, Queen Charlottes Isld, March '34-she careened over & could not be defended when the tide ebbed. The crew escaped to Ft Simpson. This summer '34 I went with the expedition to the Stikine river. We were to build 30 miles inland 40 or 50 above the Russian Fort. The Russians bluffed us off. They had a brig the Tally ho! purchased from the Americans & two 14 oared gunboats. So as not to lose the season we returned to old Ft Simpson & brought it down & built the present one, after which we went to Sitka got a protest from Baron Wrangel & armed with this and a fearful bill of losses the Co went to the Govt. It ended by Nesselrode & Palmerston urging the Cos to be friends. The Russians then rented their Stikine post to us & permitted the building of Tass still further north—the rent was paid in wheat, butter & East side Otter. At the end of Ten years this ended. The posts were not remunerative. Jno McLoughlin was killed at Stikine-the Dr eldest son-by one of his men. The chary way in which Sir Geo: behaved about this death envenomed the Dr against him. The advent of Sir Ed Belcher & Kellet with the surveying ships the Sulphur & Starling, ostensibly to survey the river and Cross Sound that is Sitka, was probably to protect the company and overawe the Russians. Belcher thought he was slighted, but I think