Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/328



292 Fred Wilbur Powell

for exportation. Formerly they put up 500 or 1,000 barrck of salmon per year at Vancouver alone, and a much larger quantity at Fort Langley.

The trade of the company consists of furs, lumber, flour, fish, grain and potatoes. The amount of traffic in furs I have no accurate means of computation; but that it is enor- mous may be safely inferred from the fact that a single indi- vidual at Astoria, in 1834, collected more than 1,800 beaver skins, although that post was nearly deserted.

The furs and peltries are shipped to London. Other exports find a ready market in California and the Sandwich Islands, such as fir boards [59] and other lumber, white oak ship tim- ber, spruce knees and spars, and white ash oars. In return, the company receives provisions, salt, sugar, molasses, spirits, &c. They obtain beef cattle from California, at three dollars per head, and pay for them in lumber, at sixty to one hundred dollars per M.

Some notion of the amount of lumber exported may be obtained from the fact that the vessel which bore me from Oregon to the Sandwich Islands brought out the complement of a quantity of boards contracted for at the price of twenty thousand dollars.

The value of flour at the Russian settlements varied from fifteen to twenty dollars per barrel. In more southerly mar- kets, salmon were worth twenty dollars per barrel, and sixty dollars per M was the minimum price of merchantable boards.

I arrived at Vancouver unwell, and was hospitably welcomed by Mr. McLaughlin, the chief factor. Medical aid was ren- dered me; a house in the village was furnished for my use, and all my physical wants were supplied ; but I was forbidden to enter the fort. Before I had been long in the country, I learned that the factor and his agents were preparing, in every artful way, to render my abode there uncomfortable and unsafe. The most preposterous calumnies and slanders were set on foot in regard to my character, conduct and designs. All my move- ments were watched, and, in some instances, I was threatened