Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/298



278 JOHN MINTO

Canadians; of boatmen and mechanics, eighteen in number; thirty rank and file, all Canadians and ex-North-Westers. These, had they not been used to discipline, would have killed Captain Thorn at Terra del Fuego. These men of all the grades of the fur trade they covered were used to obeying the orders of their superiors.

Fur hunting was a pursuit of chances of feast or famine, the latter from 1810 to 1830 much predominating. From Franchere's narrative I learn the North-Westers at Post Okanogan ate the flesh of ninety dogs during the winter of 1812-13. Messrs. Wallace and Halsey formed winter camps in the Willamette Valley to relieve the stringency for food at Astoria, and even then Mr. Frahchere was detailed to fish for sturgeon in the Columbia River, and mentions the relief so obtained from such contributions as apparently preventing the agonies of death by starvation.

The overland arrival of Wilson P. Hunt conduced to make Astoria the gathering point of the "needy west of the Rocky Mountains, and of the upcasts of the Pacific Ocean, though the debris from the various posts and parties of Canadian North- Westers seem to have caused accessions to the num- ber fed at Astoria. The sick with scurvy were sent to Fran- chere's camp. Franchere notes under date March 20 that Reed and Seaton led a starving band from Astoria to the hunt- ing camps of Wallace and Halsey on the Willamette, and re- turned to Astoria with a supply of dried venison.

April 11, McTavish and La Roche arrived at Fort George with nineteen voyageurs to meet the Isaac Todd loaded in Lon- don with goods for the North-West Company. The month of May was employed in preparing for return to Canada, but Clarke and Stuart (wintering partners) said there was not time to prepare, so it went over to 1814, and thus for another ten years no preparation would be made on the Pacific slope to give local support of agriculture to the profitable collec- tion of furs and peltries.

It is hard to find when and by whom agriculture locally was used in the drainage basin of the great Columbia Valley. Ex-