Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/33

 solicited forbidding Sutter's interference, an order which will be used only in case of absolute necessity."

Bidwell comments that the trappers continued to drive cattle and horses to Oregon on their return trip each spring, more and more as the profits of the fur trade declined. In 1842 there were two parties of trappers under Ermatinger and La Framboise respectively. This was under the provisional permit to hunt on condition of paying duties on all skins obtained, and Vallejo permitted the company's vessels to land supplies for the men at Bodega.

In a letter dated January 29, 1841, Ethan Estabrook, consular agent, wrote to Larkin, the most influential American in California:

"The Hudson's Bay Company is playing the devil with California cattle if not with California itself. ... Capt. Humphrey informs me they want 100,000 cattle and half a million of sheep if they can be had. McKay, the chief hunter, is to have a grant in the Tulares of about 30 miles square. This is destined to be the headquarters of their enterprise in the interior. About 120 hunters, well armed and disciplined, are now in the Tulares, and forty or fifty came as passengers in the bark and proceeded from Monterey to the Tulares."

Rae's management of affairs at Yerba Buena was not satisfactory to Sir George Simpson. In a letter he complains that Rae had permitted an unwelcome visitor, De Mofras, most inconsiderately to sail for the Columbia on the Company's bark Cowlitz. In another letter addressed to the Governor, Deputy Governor, and Committee of the Hudson's Bay Company in London, Sir George wrote:

"In California it appears Mr. Rae had much difficulty with the authorities in regard to the duties which are most extravagant, equal to about 50% of the invoice; and in reference to regulations of the port, a compliance with which would have been exceedingly inconvenient."

By 1844, any one of three emergencies was likely to occur: a rising for independence on the part of Californians, foreign