Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/239

 Lieutenant Fromont, who by order of the Senate had already completed an exploratory mission east of the Rocky Mountains, set off again with a company of emigrants, who were traveling to the Columbia. Since the 12th of May, 1792, the day that Captain Gray of Boston first entered the Columbia, very few American merchant ships have visited this river. After the fruitless expeditions of Astor, there remains to be cited only that of Captain Dominis, who, in 1829, in spite of the opposition of the Hudson's Bay Company, was able to take on board the brigs Owyhee and Convoy, more than eighty thousand dollars worth of furs. Terrible fevers were decimating the Indian population and the Americans claimed that the Company caused the rumor to be spread among the natives that it was their ships that had brought the malady. In 1834, the American brig May Dacre, Captain Lambert, belonging to Mr. Wyeth, who had come overland, tried to procure a cargo of salmon, but he could assemble only a few barrels on account of the opposition of the English company, even though he had promised its agents that he would not buy furs of the Indians. The brig Loriot which, In 1834, the American brig May Dacre, Captain Lambert, Government, did not carry on any trade. It only transported to California some Americans who were going there to buy cattle, and among others, Messrs. Young and Carmichael, who had set up a distillery in the Willamette Valley; but the Hudson's Bay Company and the principal French and American settlers having felt how injurious the manufacture of spirits would be, not only to