Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/69

Rh them John Clarke of Canada, and Wilson P. Hunt and Robert MacLellon, citizens of the United States. The Mackay named above, had accompanied Alexander MacKenzie in both his previously described voyages of discovery.

The articles of co-partnership provided that Mr. Astor, as head of the company, should remain at New York and manage its affairs, and supply vessels, goods, supplies, arms, ammunition and every other thing necessary to the success of the enterprise at first cost, providing that such advances should not at any one time require an outlay of more than four hundred thousand dollars. The stock of the company was divided into one hundred shares of which Astor held fifty. The business was to be carried on for twenty years; Astor to bear all the losses of the first five years, after that, losses to be borne ratably by the partners; but if not profitable for the first five years, it might be dissolved at the end of that period. The chief agent of the company on the Columbia was to hold his position for five years, and Wilson Price Hunt was selected for the first term. Four of the partners, twelve clerks (among whom was Gabriel C. Franchere who wrote a narrative of the voyage) five mechanics, and thirteen Canadian trappers, were to go to the mouth of the Columbia by the way of Cape Horn and the Sandwich islands and commence work until Hunt, the chief agent, with his party, should go overland to the same point. The ship Tonquin, two hundred and ninety tons burthen, commanded by Jonathan Thorne, a lieutenant of the U. S. navy, on leave, was made ready for the trip and sailed for the mouth of the Columbia on the 8th day of September, 1810. The ship carried a full assortment of Indian trading goods, supplies of provisions, timbers and naval stores for a schooner -to be built on the Columbia for coastwise trading, tools, garden seeds, and everything else, to start a self-sustaining settlement. And as our good friend, John Bull, was then dogging the infant republic to pick a quarrel for the war of 1812, and Mr. Astor had got an intimation that his ship designed for peaceful commerce, and settlement in distant Oregon, might be intercepted by a British privateer, the secretary of the Navy sent Captain Isaac Hull, with the U. S. frigate Constitution, to escort the Tonquin beyond danger. The Tonquin reached the Columbia on the 22d of March, 181 1, and anchored in Baker's bay. This first ship had sad luck in getting into the river on this first voyage to start the mighty current of commerce that was to ebb and flow from the great river of the west, for eight of the crew were lost in examining the shores and bays of the river to mark out its channel. On the 12th day of April, the ship's launch, with sixteen men and supplies crossed over the river from Baker's bay to Point George, and there and then commenced a settlement on the present site of the city of Astoria, and gave it the name it bears in honor of the projector of the enterprise. It was nine months after the arrival of the Tonquin before Hunt, with a remnant of his party, reached Astoria; having been harassed by the bitter opposition of the Canadian Fur Company, which had contrived to send a party ahead of him and arouse the opposition of the Indians to him, and which party under the lead of David Thompson, reached Astoria in a canoe, flying the British flag just ninety days after the American flag had been hoisted on Point George.

We have given this much of the founding of the first American settlement in Oregon, and the fortunes of the first commercial venture to open commerce with this state and the future city of Portland, and the struggles of the brave and invincible men, who did this pioneering, so that those now here in great prosperity from that feeble beginning of trade, and those who go down to sea may see how the great work was started, and all the more appreciate and honor the sturdy men who started it. Persons who would like to read the whole story of Astor's venture to the Columbia and the betrayal and loss of his property at Astoria, will find it most interesting reading and fully and graphically portrayed in Franchere's narrative, and in Washington Irving's Astoria. Mr. Elwood Evans, in his history of the northwest, fairly and justly sums up the character of Astor's enterprise as follows: