Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/279



THE PACIFIC COAST SURVEY 257

portunity, but especially now by the regular mails. I do not like to trust my letters to ships. They are neglected and lost/'

On July 16,1850, McArthur wrote Commander Young as follows from Astoria: "Since I last wrote you I have been all through Puget's Sound, Hoods Canal, Admiralty Inlet, etc., etc. I went over in the Steamer Carolina. We stopped at Victoria on Vancouver Island, and spent a very pleasant night with Governor Douglas of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the morning we went over the farm, visited the dairy, and garden and fields. Everything wore a charming aspect. The wilderness is now in its incipient smile. In a few years it will increase to a broad grin.

"The waters of the sound are a strange and peculiar anomaly. The deep blue sea runs up inland passing between straits but half a mile wide with a depth of over an hundred fathoms. Bays, Harbours, Inlets and Roads startle you at every turn- ing, forming a perfect labyrinth. We journeyed on to Nis- qually in the steamer and there I took possession of the "Ship Albion" siezed by the collector of the district. She was siezed for a most flagrant violation of the revenue laws and also for committing depredations on our timber, etc., etc. I would have brought her here but could not obtain a crew. We then came across the country traveling through a splendid grazing country for the first 24 miles. Our horses being tired, we tarried 'till morning with an old Missourian. The next day we reached the Cowlitz, traveling all day through the most excellent farming country I have ever beheld. We staid all night at the house of an old Canadian who treated us very kindly. We started the next day in a canoe down the Cowlitz and arrived at the mouth of the Columbia without accident, where I found I had been absent from the Ewing just one month! I found the sweet little craft all right. Whilst at Nisqually we spent 4 days at the farm of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Society, and witnessed the interesting process of the shearing of ten thousand sheep !

"We have now nearly completed our work here and will soon