Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/410

400, 1836, with the exception of the first winter which I passed at the Sandwich Islands, my residence was in the Territory of Oregon. Dr. McLoughlin, chief factor, treated me with uniform and singular kindness, supplying all my wants and furnishing me with every facility in the prosecution of my plans. This is, I believe, the uniform character of the Superintendents of British forts in that country. Travelers, naturalists, and all who are not traders are kindly and hospitably treated, but the moment a visitor is known to trade a beaver skin from an Indian, that moment he is ejected from the community. The company has a sum of money amounting to several thousand pounds sterling, laid aside at Vancouver for the sole purpose of opposing all who may come to interfere with its monopoly, by purchasing at exhorbitant prices all the furs in possession of the Indians, and thus forcing the settler to come to terms or driving him from the country. If it be an individual who is thus starved into submission he then usually clears a piece of land on the Willamette River, takes an Indian wife, and purchases furs of the natives, which, by previous contract, he is bound to sell to the company at an advance which is fixed by the governor.

Ft. Vancouver, the principal trading post of the Oregon, stands on the north bank of the river, about 90 miles from the mouth. The fort consists of several dwellings, storehouses, workshops, etc., all of frame arranged together in quadrilateral form, and surrounded by a stockade of pine logs about 20 ft. high. The Ft. has no bastions, and contains no armament. There are, to be sure, 4 great guns frowning in front of the governor's mansion, 2 long 18s and 2 9-pounders, but two of them have long been spiked and the others are unfit for service.

The rainy season begins here about the middle of October and continues until the first of April. During this period the weather is almost uniformly dull, foggy, or rainy. Sometimes rain falls incessantly for the space of 2 or 3 weeks. Occasionally, during the winter months, there will be a light fall of snow, and in the winter of 1835-6 the river was frozen over. The intensity of cold, however, continued but a few days and was said to be very unusual. The general range of the thermometer, (Fahr.) during that season was from 36-48 degrees, but for 3 or 4 days was as low as 25 degrees.

In the vicinity of Ft. Vancouver, the cattle graze during the whole winter; no stabling or stall feeding is ever requisite, as the extensive plains produce the finest and most abundant crops of excellent prairie grass. In choosing a site for settlement on the main river, it is always necessary to bear in mind the periodical inundations. Ft. Vancouver itself, though built on a high piece of land at a distance of 600 yards from the common rise of the tides, is sometimes almost reached by the freshets of early spring. The soil here, on both sides of the river is a rich black loam, the base being basaltic rock.