Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/215

Rh then go up the river nearly forty leagues. The small tributaries that it receives are also navigable for canoes.

The Hudson's Bay Company having engaged to furnish the posts of Russian America annually 5000 fanegues of wheat (2815 hectoliters ), and on the other hand seeing the number of fur bearing animals diminish every year, had to turn its attention to agriculture. It harvests on its own account, at Van Couver, Nesqually and Kaoulis, almost 4000 hectoliters of wheat, 2000 of barley, 2000 of oats, 4000 of peas and 1500 hectoliters of potatoes. As the settlers have no other market for the sale of their products than the forts of the Company, it is apparent that it can impose upon them arbitrarily whatever price it thinks fit. Thus it pays for wheat at the rate of from two and a half or three dollars a hectoliter and even then takes the grain only in exchange for merchandise from England, on which it realizes a considerable additional profit. The Company has in its forts 6000 sheep, 7000 horned cattle and 2000 horses; it sells cattle to the settlers for an average of $40 a head, and when it lends them any cattle it shares the increase with them.

Lumber, dressed and squared, which it sends to the Sandwich Islands, does not bring a large enough price, notwithstanding its mediocre quality, considering the scarcity of export markets. The size of the trees is enormous. All travelers agree on the measurement of some pines reaching a height of 300 feet and having a diameter of 15 to 18 feet; but these trees, growing in an always humid atmosphere generally show a very thick and spongy grain; in summer they are easily seasoned and their flexibility diminished on account of the quantity of water which remains in the pores. We must recognize, however, that oaks of various kinds, ash, birch, alder, aspens, larch, maples, firs and the royal laurels, all of which attain large dimensions, are much less permeable.