Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/223



(Letter)

Doctor John McLoughlin to Sir George Simpson. March 20, 1844.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

By KATHARINE B. JUDSON.

The following letter, copied from the original letter book in Hudson's Bay House, London, is of great interest as well of importance to students of Oregon history.

Minute annotation has seemed unnecessary.

To the writer it seems self-explanatory. It answers quite fully, in the figures of profit and loss given, and the writer has similar statements for other years, the extravagant state- ments made by Americans regarding the supposedly enormous profits of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon. Without the thrift and careful management which characterized every move, the Company would have made no profits at all in the southern section.

Crate, one of the men mentioned in this letter, is mentioned also in the volumes of the British and American Joint Coin- mission for the Final Settlement of the claims of the Hudson's Bay and Puget's Sound Agricultural Company. He seems to have been in charge of the sawmills five or six miles above Fort Vancouver, and to have had many of the duties of a mill- wright.