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XXXVI

THE BEAR FLAG AT SONOMA 1846

LIFE glided smoothly with the hospitable, lighthearted Spaniards of California, but not so smoothly at the Hudson's Bay trading-house at Yerba Buena. There were pleasant guests; Vallejo came often, and Don Salvador. The fierce, fat little commandant came up from his ruinous Presidio; the Alcalde came, and the padres, who wandered now like vagrants in the land they used to rule. Yerba Buena was a great resort for trappers and Englishmen for trade and supplies. La Framboise camped near in winter, and the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company constituted almost the entire population of the place.

From the very beginning there was trouble with the Yankee ships from New York and Boston. Some of the unavailing anguish of Wyeth on the Columbia came to Rae as he saw the Yankee clippers sailing from port to port, vending their wares and carrying off great cargoes of hides and wheat and tallow. Sometimes weeks would elapse without a single fanega of wheat or arroba of tallow at the Hudson's Bay house. It made Rae desperate. Once he said to a Yankee captain that spread his wares on the very threshold of Yerba Buena: "It has cost the Hudson's Bay Company ^"75,000 to drive the Americans from the Northwest trade in furs, and they will drive you Yankees from California if it costs a million."