Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/29



LIEUTENANT HOWISON REPORT ON OREGON, 1846 21

the seacoast, and that hitherto unknown region is represented as offering many attractions to the new settler. A few scatter- ing families are to be found horth of the Columbia and else- where. I saw personally but little of Oregon, but that com- prised its most interesting parts, viz: all settled spots on the Columbia below the Cascades, the Wilhammette valley for sixty miles above Oregon city, and the Twality and Clatsop plains. These, with the exception of superannuated missionary establishments at the Dalles and Wallawalla, and the Hudson's Bay Company's farm on the Cowlitz, and their distant trading posts in different parts of the Territory, are the only portions of the country yet occupied. All these united, however, make but an item when compared with the vast whole of Oregon, of whose topography, mineralogy, soil, or natural productions, it would be affectatioh in me to offer any account. My report, as far as it goes, shall be confined to subjects which my own observations or verbal inquiries from authentic sources could reach. And first in order and importance is of the people who form the body politic here, their laws, &c.

The persons of any consideration who have been longest settled in Oregon are the factors, clerks and servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. Their first point of residence was at Astoria; but the country hereabouts was forest land, and dif- ficult to clear, and it became necessary to increase their re- sources of provisions and other domestic productions as their establishments enlarged. About twenty-two years ago, leaving a single trader to conduct the fur trade at Astoria, they made a new settlement 96 miles up the river, and called it Vancouver. This eligible site is the first prairie land found upon the banks of the river sufficiently elevated to be secure from the summer inundations. The control of all the company's affairs west of the Rocky mountains was at that time, and continued until 1845, to be in the hands of Mr. John McLaughlin. As this gentleman figures largely in the first settlement of the country, and continues to occupy a most respectable and influential stand there, it may be proper to describe him. He is a native of