Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/219

 has well said: "The English establishment on the shores of Puget Sound is the nucleus of a future empire in the far west."

In the hope of realizing large profits from the raising of sheep, the company bought six thousand in California and imported rams of a superior breed from Scotland. No country, indeed, is better suited to the breeding and raising of wool-bearing animals; the mildness of the Puget Sound climate allows the flocks to remain outside all winter, where they find abundant feed in fields covered in all seasons with thick grass. Dr. MacLoughlin, who is a distinguished agriculturist, hopes before many years to obtain wools of equal quality with those of Saxony and Scotland. English manufacturers, alarmed at the formidable competition which has sprung up in France, Switzerland, and the United States, even, in spinning and weaving cotton materials, have applied themselves for several years with special care to the making of woolen goods. The consumption of this material has so increased that the quantities furnished by the European markets have been insufficient; the colonists of New Holland and the Cape of Good Hope, who are devoted to this branch of commerce, have profited by this scarcity to send their products to Europe and realize immense profits. Now California and Puget Sound are in a condition no less favorable for placing advantageously in Europe the wools that their flocks, once improved, will be able to produce.

The most interesting of the white population in this territory are the French-Canadian settlers, retired servants of the Company, who, as we have said, have taken up lands which they work on their own account. The three principal points they occupy are the region of Puget Sound, near Fort Nesqually, the shores of the Kaoulis River, not far from the fort of that name, and