Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/31

Rh it was no longer profitable for the Hudson's Bay Company to operate in California.

During May, 1841, the Hudson's Bay Company representative, William Glen Rae, son-in-law of Dr. McLoughlin, arrived to open the company's establishment at San Francisco Bay. In August, Leese sold his store in Yerba Buena to the firm The Annals of San Francisco records that the history of Yerba Buena from 1841 to 1845 would be a record of the private transactions of the Hudson's Bay Company. Almost the total population was made up of officers and servants of the company. Bancroft complains that there is a remarkable absence of all contemporary records or correspondence on the subject of the Hudson's Bay Company during these years.

Oregon and California had reached by 1840-41 a state of prosperity that attracted the attention of several nations of Europe, as well as that of the United States. The Hudson's Bay Company had been extending its forts along the Pacific, and looking forward with hope to negotiations then pending for a cession of at least a portion of California in payment of a debt due from Mexico to British subjects amounting to over $50,000,000. Rumors were rife. Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, of the United States navy, made his famous exploring trip at this time. Sir George Simpson included the two localities in the itinerary of his trip around the world. As governor of the northern district of the Hudson's Bay Company, he had a particular interest in both trade and annexation questions. Various individuals made reports on the future possibilities of the settlements on the Pacific coast. Disturbed political conditions made many of these reports secret but Duflot de Mofras, a young Frenchman who came by boat from Mexico to Monterey, and who was an attache of the French legation at Mexico City, published his findings in the most complete book of its time on Oregon and California.

In the year from September, 1840, De Mofras gives the num-