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 THE NORTHWEST BOUNDARIES

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having been destroyed by the Natives on the coast and the whole of the Crew massacred. No ship arrived in 1812 and in the fall of 1813 it was that the North- West Company purchased of the American Traders all they had collected the preceeding two years therefore no American ship ever took away, or have the Americans ever taken any produce of their Trade from the Country and when they established themselves in 1811 on the South side of the River, they had no establishment on the North side, and from the terms of the Treaty for the purchase it appears that they had one subsequently on Thompson River but abandoned it when they left the Country and they have never been there since. In 1814 the schooner Columbia was sent out which arrived at Fort George in the spring of 1815 and having delivered her supplies proceeded with skins to Canton from whence she returned to the Sandwich Islands and to the Columbia River in order to carry the skins of the following season to Canton. The supplies sent from England in 1815 and which reached Fort George in the Spring of 1816 were sent in the Brig Colonel Allen which vessel returned from the Columbia to England. All these were British vessels belonging to and fitted out by the Agents of the North- West Company with supplies for their Traders at the Columbia River. The outfits of these vessels having been found expensive and

unproductive in consequence of the restriction of British subjects from trading in China except under License from the East India Company which Company refused to permit the Agents of the North-West Company to carry away tea in return for the skins sold by them at Canton whilst American ships and Traders not being under similar restrictions had the benefit of freight for the whole voyage to China and back. Under these circumstances in the year 1815 an arrangement was made with a house at Boston under which the supplies of British manufactures required for the establishments at the Columbia were sent from England to Boston from whence a ship was dispatched to convey them to the Columbia to take the skins from the Columbia to Canton and to carry the proceeds of their sale in Teas and other produce of China from Canton to Boston where the American house retained a certain proportion of the net proceeds as a compensation for the freight. In this

River

in

manner annual supplies were sent to the Columbia each year from 1816 to 1820 and in 1821 the Estab-