Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/49

Rh out of the fur trade, it would be good business. And so the Spaniards pushed their advantage to the limit of sending the English captains down to San Bias as prisoners or pirates. Spain claimed the right to found a settlement and build a fort. The English claimed the same rights, and it was clear there could not be two sovereignties in the same territory. The upshot of the whole matter was the making of a compromise treaty of which we will give a copy in the chapter on title to the country.

But as the Spaniards were very poor business men, they never got much out of the fur trade. Besides that, otter pelts were not near so attractive as the ingots of gold and silver, they were squeezing out of the Mexicans and Peruvians. And as a matter of fact it is no more than justice to the priests, and ought to be said, that the church used its influence through the priests to protect the Indians as far as possible from the evils of the rum traffic and outrageous robbery by fur traders in getting the fruits of their labor for mere trifles. A single example may be given to show how ignorant the natives were of the value of otter skins, when they gave Captain Cook on his survey of Queen Charlotte island, two hundred sea otter skins, worth at that time eight thousand dollars, for an old iron chisel not worth a dollar.

The Americans had decided to send Gray with the Columbia back to Boston when the quarrel between the English and Spaniards was at its height; and to that end, with the furs taken by Kendrick and Gray, he—Gray, returned to Boston at the close of 1789. The joint expedition of the two ships had not been greatly profitable, but the Boston merchants were not discouraged, and resolved to outfit the ship and send Gray out again.

Accordingly the Columbia sailed out of Boston harbor on the 28th of September, 1790, for its second voyage to the coast of Old Oregon, and arrived at Clayoquot on the west coast of Vancouver island on the 5th of June, 1791. After a rest for a few days, the ship, proceeded to the eastern side of Queen Charlotte island, on which and the opposite main land coast she remained until September, exploring and trading with the Indians, going as far north as the present extreme southern end of Alaska. Gray returned to Clayoquot on the 29th of August, having had only indifferent success in getting furs, and then went into winter quarters near an Indian village, and during the winter, built a small sloop and lived on the ducks and geese so plentiful and fat. The next spring (1792) brought a lot of traders from France, Portugal, England, and the United States. There were twenty-eight vessels on the northwest coast in the spring of 1792 at one time. Five of them came expressly to make geographical explorations. The others brought out government commissioners or supplies for garrison, and national vessels. But it is no part of our purpose to follow the movements of any of these ships.

We return again to Captain Gray in winter quarters at Clayoquot. In February, 1792, the Indians that had all along been so friendly to Gray, formed a plot to seize the ship and kill every man but a Kanaka servant boy. The plot was detected and defeated by the mistake of the Indians in trying to bribe this Kanaka to wet the powder in all the fire arms on a certain night. By moving the ship, preparing for defence and firing the cannon into the woods, the attack was prevented. On the 23d of February the sloop which Gray had built — the first American ship built on the coast—was launched and named the Adventure, and on April 2, both of Gray's ships sailed out for their spring harvest of furs. The two vessels parted company at Clayoquot, Gray and the Columbia going southward. On the 29th of April, Gray met the Englishman, Vancouver, just below Cape Flattery, and gave him some account of his discoveries and among other things told him about having been off the mouth of a river in latitude 46 degrees north where the outgoing flood was so strong as to prevent him from entering the river after nine day's effort. After meeting Vancouver he ran into what is now called Gray's harbor, and remained there trading with the Indians, and got into a fight with them, until the 10th of May,