Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/231

 river, a little distance from the hut where Lewis and Clark had wintered, the expedition put up a fort, or factory, called Astoria, in honor of the head of the enterprise.

In 1813 war broke out between England and the United States, and October 16, of the same year the establishment of Astoria, together with the furs and merchandise that it contained, was sold by the agent of Mr. Astor to the emissaries of the North-West Company, which had also erected forts along the Columbia. On December 1, the sloop-of-war, Racoon entered the river, and on the 12th, Captain Black, of the British navy, took solemn possession of Astoria, which thereafter was called Fort George. The Americans were in complete ignorance of this when they signed with Great Britain the treaty of Ghent, December 24, 1814.

Fort George was in the form of a parallelogram forty-five by seventy-five meters, surrounded by a wooden palisade. The factory comprised divers buildings and sixty-five persons of all nations and colors, of whom twenty-six Were Sandwich Islanders. The fort was defended by two pieces of 18, two short cannon of 6, and seven swivel guns. Neither the agents of the American government nor those of Mr. Astor occupied Fort George, which was returned to them two years later, and the Pacific Fur Company ceased to exist.

In 1822, Astor founded a new company under the title of the North-American Company. This company limited its operations at first to the vicinity of the Great Lakes and the headwaters of the Mississippi; it extended them to the Yellow Stone river, and ended by uniting with another concern called the Columbia Fur Company. Mr. Ashley, of Saint Louis, Missouri, who had established