CONTENTdm
British Columbia Historical Books Collection
Makers of Canada
Coats, Robert Hamilton, 1874-1960
Gosnell, R. E. (R. Edward), 1860-1931
"(The makers of Canada. Edited by D. C. Scott, P. Edgar, and W. D. Le Sueur) Really a history of Vancouver Island and British Columbia before amalgamation and during Douglas' tenure as governor, with special emphasis on the Cariboo gold excitement of 1858-62. Also: Canadian Club edition (Toronto, Morang & Co., 1910). Also: 1912. (Parkman edition, v. 20). Also: London, Oxford University Press, 1926." -- Lowther, B. J., & Laing, M. (1968). A bibliography of British Columbia: Laying the foundations, 1849-1899. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, p. 170. "(Half-title: The makers of Canada. Edition de luxe; edited by Duncan Campbell Scott, Pelham Edgar and William Dawson LeSuer [v.20]). Edition limited to four hundred signed and numbered sets. Series title also at head of t.p. 'Really a history of Vancouver Island and British Columbia before amalgamation, and during Douglas' tenure as governor, with special emphasis on the Cariboo gold excitement of 1858-62':- Lowther. Later editions listed under series (no.351)." -- Strathern, G. M., & Edwards, M. H. (1970). Navigations, traffiques & discoveries, 1774-1848: A guide to publications relating to the area now British Columbia. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, p. 58. "Contents: ... vol. 8. Bryce, G. Mackenzie, Selkirk, Simpson. 1905 .... vol.20. Coats, RH. and Gosnell, R.E. Sir James Douglas. 1908.- vol.21. Doughty, A.G. Index and dictionary. 1911. Copy (not seen): Vancouver P.L. (incomplete)." -- Strathern, G. M., & Edwards, M. H. (1970). Navigations, traffiques & discoveries, 1774-1848: A guide to publications relating to the area now British Columbia. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, p. 191.
369 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
application/pdf
PSfetii THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA library! From the library of Dr. C.E. Dolman THE MAKERS OF CANADA EDITED BY DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT, F.R.S.C., PELHAM EDGAR, Ph.D., and WILLIAM DAWSON LE SUEUR, B.A., LL.D., F.R.S.C. SIR JAMES DOUGLAS I EDITION DE LUXE This edition is limited to Four Hundred Signed and Numbered Sets, of which this is Number /* I KKRS OF CANADA SIR JAM$t DOUGLAS BY ROBERT HAMILTON COATS AND R. E. GOSNELL THE MAKERS OF CANADA SIR JAMES DOUGLAS BY ROBERT HAMILTON COATS AND R. E. GOSNELL EDITION DE LUXE TORONTO MORANG & CO., LIMITED 1908 ^BftfPPB^5^^^^5^2S?35^^S%^S^^^^^Sl^^E ISESiaE^5fKaiSi*&»itoKJt*tew jt&Mkti^S^inMSii SSHI^iBBI Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada in the year 1908 by Morang & Co., Limited, in the Department of Agriculture. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE NORTH-WEST COAST CHAPTER II THE TRAVELLER OVERLAND Page 1 49 CHAPTER III NEW CALEDONIA 87 CHAPTER IV FORT VANCOUVER 113 CHAPTER V THE OREGON BOUNDARY 147 CHAPTER VI VICTORIA 175 CHAPTER VII VANCOUVER ISLAND CHAPTER VIII THE TWO COLONIES 207 231 CHAPTER IX CONFEDERATION INDEX 303 357 CHAPTER I V. THE NORTH-WEST COAST BRITISH Columbia, as we know it to-day, has had an organic existence only since the year 1859, or, at the earliest, if we include the colony of Vancouver Island, since 1849. Its history, therefore, as Crown colony and province of the Dominion of Canada, is contemporary with the lives of many still living. In a previous era, however, the region had bulked large in the annals of the fur trade; and in a period still more remote it was a part of the romatic story of the conquest of the Pacific. If, therefore, we would penetrate beyond results to ultimate causes, to see the community in its making and the material which the most active of its makers found to his hand, as well as the development which sprang from that beginning, we should find that the inquiry, notwithstanding the remoteness of the region from the political life of the continent with which we are most familiar, and the recent date at which its organization was effected, leads far into the past. We must begin, indeed, if we would trace the stream of western history to its source, with a time almost coeval with the earliest European knowledge of America and but little subsequent to the landing of Columbus on its eastern shores. 1 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS The fact that the progress of colonization on this continent received a very remarkable impetus from the western side, has not always been given emphasis. Three causes have been commonly assigned for the early spread of civilization in America. The original discovery of the continent came as a result of that spirit of adventure, born of the Renaissance, which, coupling itself with the demand of the trader for a short route to the Orient, sent navigators into every sea. Two centuries before Columbus, Marco Polo and his following of mediaeval travellers had fired the imagination of the age with the glories of Cathay. The dream that a path to these might lie by the western ocean, or, when the barrier of two continents stretched itself in the way, by the rivers and mountain passes of the new land (or, it might be, by some "Strait of Anian" in the sea itself), was ever before the eyes of that daring race of sailors and discoverers who traced the coasts and penetrated the pathless wildernesses of the New World. The second compelling force manifested itself later, when to the religious zeal of Europe, still seething from the Reformation, came the knowledge that America had a native population sunken in savagery and spiritual darkness. This operated in two directions: the heathen brought the missionary, most dauntless of martyrs; on the other hand, those who in an age of relentless persecutions looked with longing eyes for a land of freedom, 2 COLONIZATION FROM THE WEST found suddenly a whole continent open to them where opposing bigotries were unknown. Of such were the Jesuit Fathers and the Puritans of New England. "If Columbus discovered the new continent," says Mr. Gold win Smith, "the Puritans discovered the New World." But a third factor, strong as these, was the lust of gain. To the covetous eyes of the Spaniard, mighty on sea and land, who had already forced his way by Cape Horn to the Pacific, stood revealed the wonderful riches of Mexico and Peru. These hapless countries he overran with fire and sword, plundered them of their gold, and trampled their ancient and remarkable civilizations into the dust. The return of the Spanish galleons laden with treasure set Europe on fire. Of all the influences that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries turned the eyes of the adventurer towards America, greed was undoubtedly the most powerful. It is of special import to the present purpose because of the far-reaching part it played in the development of enterprise on the Pacific Ocean. It is not the intention here to outline the history of the entire Pacific coast of America, but to trace briefly the more important events which led to the discovery of the north-west portion of it and to the ultimate domination of British interests therein. And here, across the path of the story at its outset, falls, and for two centuries abides, the mighty shadow of Spain. It was fortunate for the 3 S£53i£ft££Sfc SIR JAMES DOUGLAS establishment of British influence in North America and especially on the western shores of the continent, that a people so powerful as the Spaniards in the sixteenth century did not possess the genius for colonization. Impetuous and daring the Spanish spirit was; but the greed and cruelty ingrained in its very fibre cast a blight on whatever it touched and left no other monument than enduring hate. Such power could not finally prevail. War and spoliation led the Spaniards, at various times, far northward from their base in Mexico; but the vast Pacific slope, so full of latent possibilities, remained, for as long as their influence overshadowed it, unvisited and unknown. The early operations of Spain in the Pacific, however, are of importance as the first of a series of events which have had an immediate influence upon present conditions in the northern and western portions of America. Other contributing agencies from the side of the Pacific were the Russian occupation of Alaska and the establishment of British trade interests by sea on the north-west coast. Intermingled with these were the later activities of the overland traders and discoverers of the North-West Company, the Hudson's Bay Company and the Astorians, who fought their way through the mountains to the Pacific under the flags of their nations. It will be of interest to note from the earliest point how these several influences arose and entered into combination. 4 -^-i-ifi.-wi I ■;;,-:- THE DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC Balboa was the first white man to see the Pacific—marching his men mid-deep into its surf and proclaiming the sovereignty of Spain over its mighty waters, "for all time, past, present, or to come, without contradiction, north and south, from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic." Mexico, the ancient seat of the Tol- tecs and Aztecs, was discovered five years later, in 1518. In 1519, it was conquered by Cortez, and the civilization of Montezuma was overthrown. Magellan, a Portuguese, who had joined the service of Spain under Charles V, had previously completed his memorable voyage around the world, sailing through the straits of his name to the Philippine Islands, where he lost his life. This opened the way to the Orient by the Southern Ocean. Vanschouten and Lemaire, two Dutch navigators, subsequently doubled Cape Horn, passing in 1516 outside of the course held by Magellan. These and other voyages, while they threw light on one of the vexed problems of the day5 disappointed anticipations both as to the nearness of Asia and the nature of the passage. They led, however, to greater zeal in the prosecution of discovery on the continent of America itself, in which, especially in southern latitudes, Spain was the leader and, at first, almost alone. There followed the conquest of Peru by Pizarro in 1532 and 1533, when the rule of the Incas, more enlightened in many respects than that of Spain herself, was 5 * *^*vs>sffx-Etiggfzit332&bl2$£J£2,!iiS!3 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS overwhelmed. This epoch of blood has been made a household tale by Prescott: it is referred to here only in connection with the immediate result it had of further whetting the appetite of the Spaniards for plunder, in pursuance of which they began, soon after, a series of excursions northward. One of the earliest of these expeditions was made, under the direction of Cortez, in 1528, by Pedro Nunez Maldonado, who surveyed the coast for one hundred leagues, as far as the river Santiago. Another was despatched in 1532, under the command of Mendoza, who penetrated to the 27th parallel of north latitude. A third set out a year later, consisting of two ships commanded by Gri- jalva and Becerra, the former of whom discovered the Revillagigedo Islands, while the latter reached the 23rd parallel. Nufto de Guzman, governor of the Spanish possessions on the Gulf of Mexico and the rival of Cortez, next traced the western shore of the continent as far as the mouth of the Colorado River. It is unnecessary to mention all the voyages made by Cortez himself, by Ulloa, Allarcon and Cabrillo, prior to 1543, by which time the country between the 41st and 43rd parallels— or what is now the northernmost limits of the state of California—had been reached both by sea and overland. Meanwhile the Spaniards had established themselves firmly on both seaboards of Central America and Mexico. The expeditions by land were equally as notable as those by sea, and 6 yniiuilfi FRANCIS DRAKE the hardships which they involved even more terrible. The two friars, Marcos and Honorata, with Francisco Vasquez de Coronada and Fernando de Soto were the most celebrated leaders, and the wished-for goal was the discovery of new Mexicos and Perus. But Spain was not to repeat adventures like these. The actual and more important result was one that in itself she valued little—the determination of the coast of California and the exploration of a vast extent of the interior. Coincidently with the earlier enterprises of Spain, we are introduced, amid clash of swords, decks slippery with blood and desperate battle indescribable, to the British type of adventurer in the Pacific—Francis Drake, the first Englishman to sail a ship on its waters. Sea-dog and pirate as he was, he lives forever in the memory of his countrymen as the scourge of their ancient enemies. With the immortals, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Cavendish, he was one of the founders of the navy of England. Rounding Cape Horn in 1578, he burst upon the Spanish coast, eager for revenge and treasure. The towns were unprepared for his coming, and could offer but little resistance. So inconceivable to the Spaniard was an Englishman in 'the Pacific, that their ships, low in the water with the gold and jewels of Peru, dipped colours and waited for him as a friend. Drake's story is so wild, so terrible, as to be almost alone of its kind. 7 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Deep was the memory of his voyage to the Spanish coast; for a century after, his name was never spoken but with horror. The age was one of relentless cruelty and reprisals, and Drake gave less perhaps than he would have received. His visit to the Pacific is important as establishing the earliest claim of England to an interest in that ocean. In the spring of 1579 he sought to return by a northern route, in order to avoid the Spaniards; but after reaching a point between the 42nd and 48th parallels—or, according to some, as far north as the southernmost islands of Alaska—and finding no avenue of escape, he retraced his steps and put in at a safe harbour for repairs. The bay a little north of San Francisco, commonly known as Drake's Bay, was the point selected for this purpose. There he remained for some time, having assumed, on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, the sovereignty of the North American coast, to which he gave the title of New Albion. His ship, laden with booty, carried him, in the end, safely home by way of the Philippines, the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Portsmouth on September 26th, 1580. Cavendish, with hardly less of battle and plunder, followed much the same course as Drake, in the year 1587. One who belongs to the century of Drake and whose name is inseparably associated with the waters of British Columbia, though the honour was 8 SBBWSBtflUH JUAN DE FUCA long withheld, was Juan de Fuca, a native of Ceph- alonia. His real name was Apostolos Velerianos. While in the service of the viceroy of Mexico, he commanded, in 1592, an expedition northward, in the course of which he entered the strait now known by his name, between Vancouver Island and the state of Washington. He sailed some distance eastward, his course, as described by himself, corresponding in the main with the general direction of the waters as we now know them. He returned, however, before emerging northwards into the sea, somewhat rashly concluding that he had discovered the traditional Strait of Anian. For many years the voyage was regarded as apocryphal, and it was not until the strait was rediscovered by subsequent navigators in the latitude assigned to it by Juan de Fuca that the earlier sailor received his due meed of renown. During the period covered by these and other early voyages in the Pacific, the struggle for the sovereignty of the New World and the trade of the distant West—a struggle destined to continue for nearly three hundred years—had already begun amongst the maritime nations of Europe. The powers were Spain, Great Britain, France, Portugal and Holland. The first, having established herself in Central and South America, conquered the Philippines and secured a foothold in the East Indies. Portugal extended her trade to India and 9 ^BVSICMBcKXZ SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the South Seas. A new France arose in the valley of the St. Lawrence. Great Britain planted vigorous colonies on the North Atlantic coast. Dutch navigators, throughout, laboured persistently in the wake of their competitors. Here was ample field for opposing interests. It was, however, the pretentions of the Spaniards to exclusive domain in the south and west that were most bitterly resented by the rival nations. By virtue of prior discovery and of the papal grant of 1493, no nation of Europe, with the one exception of Portugal, was recognized by the court of Madrid as having any claim to occupy territory in America, or to navigate the western Atlantic or any part of the Pacific. The exceptional position of Spain had been in a measure recognized by Great Britain in 1670, and confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, though the terms of these and other agreements were so vague, as applied to a new and unknown continent, that they served rather to increase than to prevent confusion. It was, however, the efforts of England to establish trade relations with the Spanish dominions which constituted the cause of nearly all the disputes between the two countries subsequent to the middle of the sixteenth century. In connection with this keen trade rivalry, which has to do with much that follows, the difference often remarked between the policy of Great Britain and the continental powers should be borne in mind from the outset. In the development of British 10 RIVAL TRADE POLICIES commercial and colonial empire, incomparably more has been effected by the enterprise of private individuals than by government initiative. Certain of the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns encouraged, and even undertook, commercial ventures, and the fact lent them a support among the trading classes which stood them in good stead during periods of political unrest and financial embarrassment. But the practice was never extended into a principle. The continental colonial policy, however, and notably that of France and Spain, was almost wholly paternal, designed to reflect the greatest possible glory on the reigning monarch. The new possessions were accordingly surrounded by a rigour of control that ultimately crippled all expansion. On the other hand, under the British policy, as exemplified on the Atlantic seaboard of America, in the voyages of British traders to the Pacific, or in the operation of the Hudson's Bay Company in the interior of the continent, enterprise was ever untrammelled and individual. To-day, as a consequence, North America is the home of a free and progressive people, while over the southern continent still hovers the spirit of its Spanish origin,—restlessness, revolt, and a lack of the genius of organization and initiative. From the date of de Fuca's voyage, the Pacific coast between the 43rd and the 55th parallels of latitude remained for upwards of one hundred and eighty years unvisited by any European navi- 11 &%gg%£E^g!mmz&g?zzmgm SIR JAMES DOUGLAS gator. Roughly, the period embraces the whole of the seventeenth, and three-quarters of the eighteenth, century. Meanwhile, under the Spanish king's instructions, the coast of California had been surveyed again by Sebastian Vizcaino, one of whose ships reached the 43rd parallel in January, 1603. The interval also included the establishment of the Jesuit missions, and their subsequent expulsion from the Spanish dominions; sundry voyages and discoveries in the Southern Pacific; the formation and disappearance of a British colony in the Falkland Islands; the establishment of Spanish settlements and Dominican missions on the west coast of California, from which the Mexican Creole of the present day is sprung; and, most important of all, the gradual waning of the power of Spain. On the whole, the record on the Pacific was one of almost sheer stagnation. On the Atlantic coast, during the same period, nations had been born and cradled. France had founded a great colony, and had lost it to England. England had planted the seeds of the United States of America. The whole eastern continent was subdued to the Anglo-Saxon. In the great plains of the interior, an empire within an empire, the Hudson's Bay Company already bore sway. Still further north and west, Russia had made good a foothold that was eventually to include dominions twice as large as the British Columbia of to-day. 12 THE VOYAGE OF THE SANTIAGO Before entering upon the period which was to decide forever to whom the ascendency in these waters should belong, namely, the closing quarter of the eighteenth century, certain final efforts of Spain to perpetuate her exclusive grasp upon the Pacific must be briefly dealt with. They followed somewhat tardily upon the conclusion of an agreement in 1763 with Great Britain and France, whereby New Orleans and Louisiana west of the Mississippi passed to Spain, while Canada, Florida and the other French possessions in North America were awarded to Great Britain. Spain had at last awakened to the fact that the maintenance of her sovereignty in the New World called for decisive action. But official corruption, the forerunner of national decay, had long ago set in, and its effects were in no place more conspicuous than in America. Galvez, an officer of the court of Castile, was sent as visitador. On his arrival, he at once determined upon the establishment of colonies and garrisons on the west coast of California. Pursuant to this policy, an effort was made to explore the coast north of Cape Blanco, on or about the 43rd parallel, beyond the present boundary of California, to which point Vizcaino had penetrated in 1602-3. In the year 1774, Juan Perez, accompanied by Estevan Jose* Martinez, made a notable voyage from San Bias in the corvette Santiago. He was commissioned to proceed to the 60th parallel, where it was assumed 13 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the north-west passage from the Atlantic would be found, and to explore the coast line southward. After reaching the northern islands of the Queen Charlotte group, however, Perez steered homeward, passing some time in a bay which he called Port San Lorenzo,—identified by some as Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, the anchorage of Cook some fourteen years later, but more probably, according to recent investigations, a small bay situated between Point Estevan and the Escalante Reef. Upon his return to Monterey, the Santiago was re-commissioned under command of Heceta, with Perez as one of his officers. The corvette was accompanied on her second voyage by the schooner Sonora, commanded by the celebrated Don Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, with Maurelle as pilot. This expedition was by far the most notable of all the Spanish voyages to the north-west coast and ranks high in the annals of discovery in the Pacific. With varying fortunes, the vessels steered northward. Off the strait of Juan de Fuca, as they supposed, they were blown southward by a heavy gale. At the Isla de Dolores, subsequently named Destruction Island, a boat's crew was murdered by the Indians. The vessels became separated, and Heceta, losing heart, set sail for Monterey. On the way he in part redeemed the venture from failure by sighting, from twenty miles off shore, the entrance to the great Columbia River; but, with a 14 BODEGA Y QUADRA crew so stricken with scurvy that they could neither reef sail nor drop anchor, he could venture no nearer to confirm the discovery. If what he said was true, he was the first white man to see that famous stream. The promontory of San Rouge, near by, he probably identified. Meanwhile, Quadra and Maurelle kept bravely on, despite incredible hardships and a greatly diminished crew, passing and naming a number of coast features now well-known; Anchoring finally in the Bay of Islands, on the north side of Edgecomb Mountain, Quadra took formal possession of the country in the name of Spain. Returning southward, he surveyed the coast line with the utmost care, to discover, if possible, the Strait of Anian, or, failing that, the mouth of the Columbia; but as his examination began about thirty miles south of the proper latitude, the quest at Cape Mendocino was abandoned. In steering for San Francisco Bay, then well-known, the Sonora entered a smaller bay to the north, to which Bodega gave his own name. This is the bay in which Sir Francis Drake is supposed to have refitted, known to-day as Drake's Bay. Four years later, Artfaga and Quadra, accompanied by the faithful Maurelle, made still another voyage of discovery, sighting Mount St. Elias, previously known to the Russians, and entering Prince William's Sound. This was the third and final voyage of the Spaniards in carrying out the policy inaugurated 15 I IP 1 II Eg ft SIR JAMES DOUGLAS under Galvez. Until nine years later, or the year 1788, no further attempt was made to extend the power of Spain to the northward. In the interval, events of the utmost importance had taken place, events which were ultimately to loosen forever her hold upon North America. Another and a more aggressive nation had learned of the wealth of this coast. When, in the year named, the Spaniards sought once more to assert their claim, the seeds had been planted for a controversy that brought them to the verge of war and all but set aflame a general European conflict. |&$$ That other and more aggressive nation was, of course, Great Britain. Since the days when Sir Francis Drake had swept like a hurricane along the coast of South America, laying, perhaps unwittingly, in these and other exploits, the foundation of the naval supremacy of his country, England had risen from a fourth or fifth rate power, with little territory, limited population and resources, and a small and irregular army, to the first rank among the powers of Europe. The triumph was almost wholly one of commerce. After the defeat of the Armada, trade had based itself upon the naval prowess of England and had thrust her steadily forward. By the end of the seventeenth century she had eclipsed her greatest rival of commerce on the high seas—the Dutch. So, too, in the eighteenth century, the trading class of Great Britain was the 16 < GREAT BRITAIN IN THE PACIFIC first to recognize the importance of the Pacific. The time was opportune. England was herself firmly established on the Atlantic coast. France was no longer a power in America; the Revolution and Napoleon were as yet hidden in the political future. Spain's recent endeavour to retain her grasp on the Pacific and to justify her claims to exclusive rights in its waters was but the final effort of an expiring influence. Russia, a more to be dreaded antagonist, had already fortified herself in the extreme north-west and was known to have extended to the New World her traditional policy of encroachment. Having conquered Siberia and established a trade with the natives of the Alaskan archipelago, there had been created a series of vested rights, more embarrassing to Great Britain at this juncture than all the plans of France and Spain combined. England, therefore, was alive to her interests when she decided to send expeditions at this time to delimit the shore Kne of the continent. But the impelling motive was commercial—to discover the passage, supposed, somewhere between the 40th and 60th parallels, to lead to the Atlantic. The key to the oriental trade, more important even than the New World itself, was thus the objective of the intrepid Cook and Vancouver, and the fact is eminently characteristic of British policy. It was left, too, in the end, to the enterprise of commerce—to the Hudson's Bay Company and the North-West Company—to con- 17 »s i Ik- sir JAMES DOUGLAS serve for England her splendid domain in Western America. The French Revolution and the ambition of Napoleon withdrew her energies, at a critical moment, for the defence of her own shores and the preservation of Europe ; and these far off lands, at that time as little known in the United States as in the Old World itself, were left largely to work out their own destinies. The era of exploration that dawned with the appearance of the British trader in these waters, was included within the closing quarter of the eighteenth century. It was the final and, in many respects, the most brilliant in the history of discovery in the Pacific. Great Britain played the leading r61e, but Russia, France and Spain were only less active. The United States also plunged with all the ardour of young nationhood into the quest of glory over seas. With the eager spirit which had animated the earlier centuries of discovery, the unexplored remainder of America was now made known to geographers, and the outlines of the continent charted with approximate accuracy. The advantages of Great Britain lay in the superiority of her methods of navigation, the ability of her seamen, the strength of her commercial fleet and her worldwide trade, whereby she was able to utilize immediately and to the fullest extent the wealth of her discoveries. Thus, it happened that of all the nations her efforts were the most persistent and her work the most pains- 18 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE taking and exact, and it was mainly through her navigators that the world was finally enlightened as to the character of the north-west coast. Spain and Russia, though they sent out many expeditions, added, in comparison, but little of value. The Spaniards, in particular, pursued a policy of secrecy which robbed them of much credit. But the. inferiority of their mathematical instruments would still have left them handicapped in the race with Great Britain. The work of Cook and Vancouver demanded qualities of skill, as well as of courage and endurance, that are not often duplicated in a single generation. It is well to repeat, in connection with the voyages of these two great commanders, that their primary object was to survey the north-west coast line, within specified parallels of latitude, and to discover whether any opening existed such as might lead to the Atlantic Ocean by the supposititious North-west Passage, for the discovery of which a reward of twenty thousand pounds was offered by the British admiralty. The narrative of Juan de Fuca, though long discredited, had not been forgotten. The latitude of de Fuca's opening was between the 47th and 48th parallel. There was also the reputed strait of Admiral de Fonte, another and wholly mythical explorer of the seventeenth century, near the 53rd parallel. The famous river of Oregon, reported by Jonathan Carver, might even connect by some mysterious chan- 19 HnBKSHHBBPHBBSHBflJHfe SIR JAMES DOUGLAS nel with the waters of the long sought Strait of Anian. It is not the first instance in history in which a chimera, having laid hold of the popular imagination, paved the way for results more important than were claimed for the original fancy. In 1778, the famous navigator, Captain James Cook, arrived on the north-west coast of America, He had two ships, the Resolution and the Discovery, and his instructions from the British government were to examine the coast line from about 45° north latitude to the Arctic Ocean, and to ascertain whether any large rivers, inlets or arms of the sea extended to the eastward. Cook first sighted the coast in latitude 44° north; but, having been blown off shore by bad weather, the strait of Juan de Fuca escaped his observation. Land was next seen in the vicinity of a large sound, latitude 49° 30' north, in which Cook anchored, March 29th, 1778. After a few weeks spent in refitting his vessels and refreshing their crews, he continued on his northward voyage, his men having obtained a valuable quantity of furs during their stay. Cook named the bay in which he had passed this interval King George's Sound; but understanding afterwards that it was called Nootka by the natives, it was re-named, and has ever since been known as Nootka Sound. It was Cook's intention, on leaving Nootka, to proceed as speedily as possible to the part of 20 CAPTAIN COOK the coast lying under the 65th parallel of latitude; the violence of the weather, however, again prevented him from approaching the land for some days, and he was forced to leave unvisited the region near the 53rd parallel where geographers had placed the strait of Fonte. Cook accordingly denied the existence both of Fonte's and de Fuca's channels. After discovering and naming the two large bays known as Prince William's Sound and Cook's Inlet, and having stayed a short time at Unalaska, Cook proceeded to the Arctic Ocean, passing through the strait which he named Behring in honour of the Danish navigator who had first discovered it. Turning about, he set sail for the Sandwich Islands, where he was killed, February 14th, 1779. The ships then returned to England. It was the report of these crews respecting the boundless wealth in furs—to be had almost for the asking on this coast—that aroused the European nations to action, and incited them, on Cook's narrative being given to the world in 1784, to plan still further expeditions and discoveries. Had an independent state arisen in that early time on the north-west coast, it might fittingly have chosen the sea-otter as its emblem. To the early navigators of the North Pacific the sea-otter offered the same lure of fortune as the gold and silver of Peru to the soldiers of Spain. The tales of the dangers of the chase and of the enormous profits 21 T~ ^tMt»sff!»w*m»i**gattBifcM SIR JAMES DOUGLAS read like romance. So eager and relentless was the trade that the sea-otter was already rare when British Columbia placed the wapiti and the mountain sheep on its escutcheon ; it has now all but vanished, leaving no trace of the time when it played so important a part in the history of the region. With its discovery by Cook a new era begins in the story of maritime adventure in the Pacific. The earliest expedition having the trade in otter primarily in view was made by James Hanna, an Englishman, in the year 1785. The voyage was eminently successful. Otter skins were purchased from the natives for trinkets, and sold at enormously enhanced prices in China, then the world's market for furs. About the same time, Guise, Meares and Tipping came from England on a similar errand. Meares spent the winter of 1786-7 in Prince William's Sound, where more than half his crew died of scurvy. Portlock and Dixon, fur traders sailing from London in 1785, made the discovery of the separation of the Queen Charlotte group from the mainland. The discovery was confirmed in 1788 by Duncan, who, with Colnett, arrived on the coast prior to the departure of Portlock and Dixon. This and the numerous openings found in the shore-line, all presumably channels extending far to the eastward, led to the supposition that the entire north-western portion of the American continent might be a vast collection of islands, and 22 THE SEA-OTTER the story of the mythical de Fonte's voyage again began to gain credit. It was at this time also that the name of the old Greek pilot, Juan de Fuca, was rescued from oblivion by the re-discovery of the broad arm of the sea into which he declared he had sailed in 1592. Barkley, an Englishman, in command of the Imperial Eagle, a trader for furs under the flag of the Austrian East India Company, was, according to one version, the means of rehabilitating de Fuca's fame. After the sale of the Imperial Eagle in the East Indies in 1788, Barkley made a second voyage to the north-west coast in the brig Halcyon. He was accompanied on both voyages by his wife, the first white woman, so far as known, to visit these shores. With the separation of the American colonies from Great Britain, a new element was introduced into this growing commerce of the Pacific. The moment the bond was broken, every skipper in New England seemed to turn his thoughts seaward. Great Britain being occupied in Europe and her powerful competition therefore withdrawn, the American ships were free to carry the new flag wherever the ambition of trade might lead. And it led far. Unrestrained, its sailors swept southward to Cuba, to South America, and around Cape Horn. In the year 1787, they made their first voyage to the Pacific and the north-west coast, the ship Columbia under Kendrick, and the sloop Lady Washington, under Gray of Boston, doubling Cape 23 «mesiSTS^^mM9i£^^^^iS^i-M£^J^!t^Jtlt^ -^mi^M^^^i^^^iM.w^m^^^ss^ttm L SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Horn together. The Lady Washington arrived at Nootka on the 17th September, 1788, and remained there with her consort during the whole of the following winter. They were still in Nootka Sound in 1789. The Columbia, now by an exchange of commanders, under Gray, returned to Boston by way of China, arriving in August, 1790, when she was received amid great rejoicings, medals being struck in honour of the ship that had first carried the flag of the United States almost fifty thousand miles around the world. Meanwhile the Lady Washington, under Kendrick, remained in Nootka Sound. In six weeks Gray had refitted and had started again for the Pacific. During this voyage he was destined to make one of the greatest discoveries in the annals of his country. On May 11th, 1792, he entered the mouth of the Columbia River, accomplishing what generations of navigators, Cook and Vancouver among them, had sought in vain to do. On leaving the river on May 20th, he gave it the name of his ship. The honour of the discovery has been claimed by the Spaniards, and for Broughton, the lieutenant of Vancouver, who subsequently entered the river and sailed a hundred miles against its current in the armed brig Chatham ; but it undoubtedly belongs to Gray, one of the most modest and worthy of the heroes of the Pacific. If the world places Cook and Vancouver in the niches of its naval heroes, Gray must be placed between them. 24 LA PEROUSE For Kendrick, the comrade of Gray, has been claimed the credit of re-discovering the strait of Juan de Fuca, though the matter is one of controversy. Metcalfe, a citizen of the United States, visited Nootka in 1789 ; and Ingraham explored the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1791 in the brig Hope. The latter left a very important description of the geography and natural history of the islands, and of the language, manners and customs of the natives. With the exception, however, of the discovery of the Columbia by Gray, the passage of the strait of Juan de Fuca by Kendrick, and the cruise of the Hope, nothing of special importance was achieved by American enterprise at that period. For a time their traders were active and numerous, but they followed trade alone, and cared little for discovery or exploration. The north-west coast about this period attracted the attention of other nations than Great Britain and the United States. La Perouse, a distinguished naval officer of France, spent three months in 1788, under orders from his government, between the 52nd and 54th parallels, making a scientific examination of the coast. He was followed in 1791 by Etienne Marchand, who, in a merchant ship, followed much the same course, leaving an account of his voyage in three volumes. Malaspina, from whom the strait of that name is called, in the same year endeavoured, with two Spanish ships, to determine in more 25 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS northern latitudes the existence of the Strait of Anian. Important also in this connection was the attempt of Elisa, in the summer of 1790, to explore the strait of Juan de Fuca, his lieutenant, Quimper, examining both shores for a distance of one hundred miles, but being unable, for lack of time, to follow the many channels and inlets the general direction of which was noted. Many Spanish names were given; few of them have survived. The Spaniards undertook a permanent establishment at Friendly Cove, Nootka, in 1790 ; and in 1792 endeavoured to form a settlement at Neah Bay, near Cape Flattery. From the former basis, Elisa, its commandant, sent Fidalgo, his lieutenant, to examine the coast to northward occupied by the Russians, and to enquire into the nature of their operations. He acquired but little geographical information of value. One of the Russian ships reported by him was that which, in command of Joseph Billings, in 1790, visited Unaiaska, Nodiak and Prince William's Sound. A voyage of the British captain, Meares, in 1788, which is a part of this fur-trading chronicle, owes its importance, not to any achievement of the expedition itself, but to the diplomatic results which it was the means, sometime later, of bringing about. War with Spain was, for a short season, imminent, and the termination of the "Nootka Affair," which had its origin in Meares's operations at Friendly Cove, gave to Britain the control of an 26 MEARES AT NOOTKA important territory, though the terms of the settlement itself, as will be seen, opened the door to a further series of controversies which were not finally laid at rest until the fixing of the Oregon boundary in 1846. In the year 1788 Meares was at Canton, China, engaged, with the assistance of some English merchants, in fitting out an expedition of two vessels for the American trade,—the Felice and the Iphigenia Nubiana, commanded by himself and Captain William Douglas, respectively. The ships, though British property and navigated by British subjects, sailed under the Portuguese flag, and were ostensibly owned by Don Cavallo & Co., of Macao, the object being to escape the heavy dues levied by the Chinese authorities on the goods of nations other than the Portuguese. On February 12th, the Iphigenia sailed for Cook's River, and the Felice for Nootka Sound, the latter arriving on May 15th. The most notable native chiefs of Nootka at that time were Maquinna and Callicum, with whom Meares cultivated friendly relations, and by whom, and by the natives generally, he was warmly welcomed. It was Meares's purpose to establish at this point a post which might become the basis of the fur trade of the future. With this in view, he purchased from Maquinna a tract of land on the shore of Friendly Cove for which he paid some eight or ten sheets of copper and other articles. Here he erected a substantial structure surrounded with breastworks and 27 i IV m SIR JAMES DOUGLAS armed with one cannon. The British flag was hoisted and for the first time waved above a formal British possession on this coast. At Nootka, Meares also built the first ship launched in what is now British Columbia—the North-west America. Later he explored the coast southward, narrowly missing the mouth of the Columbia, and on his return entered and examined the strait of Juan de Fuca for some distance, taking possession of it in the name of Great Britain. His ship, after again reaching Friendly Cove, was joined by her consort the Iphigenia from Cook's River, with a large cargo of sea- otter. Later Meares sailed for China with the furs, while the Iphigenia and the North-west America repaired to the Sandwich Islands. The succeeding events which enter into the famous Nootka affair are too intricate to be more than mentioned here. Douglas, with the Iphigenia and the North-west America returned to Nootka in the following year for the purpose of continuing the fur trade. Thereupon both vessels were seized by a Spanish ship of war commanded by Martinez, who was under orders to assert the sovereignty of the king of Spain throughout the Pacific Ocean. Nootka, which the Spanish called Port San Lorenzo, was claimed by Martinez, by right of discovery. Douglas, however, was able to show from a chart of the voyage of the Santiago in 1775 that. Cook, and not the Spaniard, was the discoverer of Nootka Sound. The Iphigenia was thereupon 28 THE NOOTKA AFFAIR released by Martinez, and the greater part of his stores returned to Douglas, with the warning, however, that he was to trade no more on that coast. Douglas subsequently sailed to the Queen Charlotte Islands and thence to China. Soon after, the British ships Princess Royal and Argonaut, sent from Macao by the Associated Companies to trade on the north-west coast, were seized in like manner, and, with the North-west America were pressed into the service of Spain. The crew of the North-west America was sent to China on the American ship Columbia then in those waters; but the crews of the two other ships were deported to San Bias, where they were treated with cruelty. Nootka was taken formal possession of and was occupied by Spain until 1795. The dispute which immediately arose between the governments of Great Britain and Spain forms one of the most important chapters in the history of the north-west coast. Not only a matter of moment in itself, it was the basis for most of the controversy that followed over the possession of this territory. Spain, as we have seen, still claimed the exclusive right to the western seas. All foreign vessels found without license in these waters were regarded as enemies, even though belonging to a nation at peace with the king. No other country, moreover, was held to have rights in any territory to reach which it was necessary to pass around Cape Horn or through the Straits of Magellan. 29 M?*5w.«Mft*iaaft<gaafM^giaMia5gg^fci Pi £ i SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Such were the fancies still nursed by Spain in the eighteenth century. It was doubtless the final consciousness that the encroachments of other nations on her traditional sphere of influence would effectively overthrow all semblance of her right to exclusive sovereignty that induced Spain now to make a final attempt to confirm her original claim. Whatever may be said of the undoubted priority of Spanish enterprise in the Pacific, England had been more active in the exploration of the north-west portion of it, and had inaugurated, and now enjoyed, the greater part of the trade in that part of the world. Without other grounds of sovereignty than the papal concession of three hundred years before, which embraced half the area of the world and included a continent which was not then known to exist, Spain's case, on the threshold of the nineteenth century, and within sixty years of the freedom of Italy, stood on a tottering basis. When the news of the seizures reached England, a vigorous protest was immediately lodged with the Spanish government. Pitt, then at the zenith of his power, united a profound knowledge of Spanish decrepitude with a wholesome belief in the ability of Great Britain to defend her own interests. The Spanish government, more skilled in the arts of intrigue than of statesmanship, and seeking at first to evade the issue, was met with a demonstration in force. The principle that "British sub- 30 THE NOOTKA CONVENTION jects have an indisputable right to the enjoyment of a free and uninterrupted navigation, commerce and fishery, and to the possession of such establishments as they should form, with the consent of the natives of the country, and not occupied by any other European nation," was enunciated with emphasis. Spain, whose power had rapidly declined, could not risk a war with England. After repeated conferences, she agreed to restore the seized vessels, to indemnify the owners for their losses, and to give satisfaction to the dignity of the British Crown. It was understood at the same time that the Spanish declaration "was not to preclude or prejudice the ulterior discussion of any right which His Catholic Majesty might claim to form an exclusive establishment at Nootka Sound." The amount of indemnity was fixed by a commission at $210,000. This was handed over to the owners of the property which had been seized, and Nootka and the adjoining territory were restored to the British Crown. JsajT Into the final settlement a number of consider?- - tions entered which deprived Great Britain lot much of the strength of her position. Pitt was undoubtedly determined, in the event of war, to strike a blow at the Spanish Empire in America. Spain, however, by the terms of the Family Compact, had the ear of France. The times were not happy for England. The French Revolution was already brewing; Europe was arming; and a series 81 gjaareaagg^gsBaacgBagaiaayj^ SIR JAMES DOUGLAS of continental alliances left Great Britain isolated. With a diminished credit, the government leaned towards a peaceful solution of the difficulty; and apart from the restitution of property and the reparation made for losses and acts of violence, the treaty left the situation in the north-west coast to all intents unaltered. In parliament it was vigorously attacked as a capitulation to Spain. Fox pointed out that it enlarged the area of dispute, and predicted a renewal of the difficulty. In this, time proved Fox right. The prestige of the country, however, had been vindicated; and the government, with a large majority at its back, was glad to be rid of an embarrassing situation. In the light of history it may be regretted that motives of temporary expediency, in this as in other instances, should have dictated the policy of Great Britain with regard to her interests in America. There were at that period only two other claimants to the Pacific coast, Spain and Russia. The latter had undoubtedly no rights south of the 60th parallel, while the former had established no title to the cos vSt north of the 38th parallel which was superior to that of Great Britain. A decisive stroke might have secured the states of Washington, Oregon and i large portion of California, for all time to come** Pursuant to the terms of the Nootka convention, commissioners were appointed by the governments of Spain and Great Britain to effect the 82 VANCOUVER AND QUADRA formal act of restitution. The men selected were George Vancouver, and one whose intrepidity has been already witnessed, Bodega y Quadra. Worthier representatives of the two great powers, it would have been impossible to choose. Steadfast as they both were in enforcing the claims of their sovereigns, and zealous to the last degree for the rights of their respective countries, each, nevertheless, could recognize in the other high courage, splendid ability and true greatness of character. While honour forbade compromise, they nevertheless became firm friends and to the last maintained the highest admiration for each other. Their names will forever remain associated as two of the greatest in the history of the north-west coast. Though the commissioners had explicit instructions from their governments as to the manner in which Nootka should be handed over, they interpreted their orders in a widely different spirit. Quadra maintained that restitution was required only of the buildings and lands that had been occupied by British subjects; and as, from due inquiry, he could find no evidence of such occupa\ tion, he argued that there was nothing to be paid for by Spain. Vancouver, on the other hand, held that, under the terms of the convention, Great Britain was entitled to the possession of the whole of the territory surrounding Nootka and Clayo- quot. Widely divergent evidence was offered in support of the opposing claims. The immediate 33 aflSBfcMaasi'En'flfcM f;l SIR JAMES DOUGLAS result was that the commissioners, unable to come to a satisfactory understanding, referred the dispute back to their respective governments, Nootka remaining in the interval under the Spanish flag. Vancouver with his two ships, the Discovery commanded by himself, and the brig Chatham, under Broughton, who had previously surveyed the coast from Cape Mendocino northward, now proceeded to the second and most important part of his commission—the thorough exploration of the whole north-west shore line. The aim, as ever, was to solve the problem of the north-west passage; it was also to establish England's claim to the coast between New Spain on the south, and Russian America on the north. The work of Vancouver and his lieutenants in this connection was so minute as to be final. The summers of 1792, 1793 and 1794 were spent on the coast, and the observations included every bay, cape and channel from San Francisco to Behring Sea. The winters were passed at the Sandwich Islands. On his untiring energy success attended from first to last, and his work remains the most extensive nautical survey ever completed in one expedition. To Vancouver, accordingly, we owe in large measure the nomenclature of the North Pacific coast. In the names which he chose many were of persons distinguished in the official life of his day; many were of humble members of his crew. 34 RESTORATION OF NOOTKA Vancouver sailed, for the last time, from the north-west coast on October 16th, 1794. On Christmas Day of that year, being still at sea, he finds it of interest to record that the crew did not fail to drink in silence to the memory of Quadra, who had died some time before. He was to be followed soon by Vancouver himself. The friendship of the two men was cemented by the name given by Vancouver to the great island of the mid-Pacific coast, for long afterwards known as "Quadra and Vancouver Island." In the efflux of time, the Spaniards having abandoned the coast altogether, the name Quadra was dropped and the temporary triumph at Nootka was thus avenged at the expense of one of the most noble of his race. In the settlement of the Nootka affair also, Vancouver's view in the end prevailed, and on the morning of March 28th, 1795, Lieutenant Pierce and Brigadier-General Alca, representing respectively the governments of England and Spain, completed the act of restitution, and the British flag was hoisted, never again to be hauled down. When Vancouver was at Point Gray, in the Gulf of Georgia, near the site of the present city of Vancouver, he fell in with two Spanish vessels of war, the Sutil and the Meooicana, commanded respectively by Lieutenants Galiano and Valdez. They were small and badly equipped, and they were the last sent by Spain into the North Atlantic Ocean for purposes of discovery. The 85 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS expedition has this distinction, however, that it is the only one, since that of Vizcaino, of which an adequate account has been given to the world with the sanction of the Spanish government. The journal of Galiano and Veldez was published at Madrid in 1802, by order of the king, with an introduction which included an historical sketch of the earlier voyages of the Spaniards on the coasts of America north of Mexico. The introduction is now, naturally, the most valuable part of the work. Notwithstanding its activity for a time, Spanish exploration had resulted in nothing. No colonies were established; no trade was built up; no territory was acquired. A few names dotting the maps of the coast—Haro, Valdez, Texada, San Juan, and the like—are all that remain to show the once all-powerful influence of Spain. The majority even of these have been replaced by the names given by English navigators, particularly those of Vancouver, and are known to-day only to the map-maker and the student of early coast history. It may be added that Great Britain herself, for a long time after the date of the Nootka Treaty, ceased to take further interest in the territory which it affected. The victory, in fact, was one of diplomacy alone. For many years a thousand miles of the Pacific coast was in reality a "no man's land," and it is in no sense due to the prescience of the statesmen of the early nineteenth century that 36 RUSSIA IN AMERICA it is British territory to-day. We must remember, of course, in mitigation of the indifference felt by Great Britain as to its future, the circumstances and conditions of the times, the remoteness of the region and the almost total lack of knowledge concerning it. It was the fur trade, not the nation, which pushed its way overland into this western empire, and carried with it the supremacy of the British flag and the authority of British law. Several terrible encounters with the Indians occurred when the trade was at its height. In 1803, the American ship Boston was destroyed by the natives of Nootka Sound, all the crew being murdered, with the exception of the armourer and the sailmaker who were kept in slavery for four years by that chief Maquinna who figured so prominently in Vancouver's and Quadra's day. In 1805, the Atahualpa, of Rhode Island, was attacked by the savages of Millbank Sound, and her captain, mate and six seamen killed, after which the sailors succeeded in repelling the assailants and saving the vessel. In the same manner the Tonquin of Boston, the first vessel of the As- torians, was in June, 1811, attacked by the natives while at anchor in Clayoquot Sound and the entire crew massacred. We may turn now to the other great power that had entrenched itself, even more securely than 37 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Great Britain, on the north-western coast, a power that has menaced at more points than one the advance of the British Empire. In 1788 Hero, on the return of a Spanish expedition from Alaska, wrote to San Bias that he had found Russian establishments between the 59th and 60th parallels. The results of that occupation were still alive in the Behring Sea and Alaska boundary disputes of the present generation. In Siberia, as in the northern part of the American continent, the stimulus to early adventure and exploration had come from the fur trade. By the middle of the seventeenth century the Russians had pushed their way into that vast and desolate territory, and, early in the eighteenth, had completed the conquest of the whole of northern Asia. Rich in furs of all kinds, the newly acquired possession afforded a fruitful field for exploitation, the more so on account of its proximity to the markets of China, with which trade relations were speedily established. Communication was provided by means of caravans, a system somewhat analogous to the brigades of the Hudson's Bay Company. But in trade it is what lies just beyond that lures. Expeditions from the northern rivers of Siberia had by 1648 found their way around the north-eastern extremity of Asia into Behring Strait, and at least one vessel was driven by storm in that year upon the coast of Kamtchatka. After repeated adventures of this kind and the establishment of intercourse 38 DISCOVERIES OF BEHRING with the natives of this far-off region, Kamtchatka was definitely included in the territory of the traders. But accounts were now brought back of still another continent looming beyond the islands of these northern seas. Was it America ? Or was it a new land altogether—wedged in between the eastern shores of Asia and the western limits of America? Peter the Great, his ambition unap- peased by the subjugation of Siberia, resolved to emulate the conquests of his European rivals in the New World. To this end he equipped an expedition under Vitus Behring, a Dane attracted to the Russian service, whose heroic career received scant justice from his own age. Sailing from Kamtchatka in 1728, Behring passed through the strait which separates Asia from America and satisfied himself on the then disputed point whether the continents were two or one. In that and the following year, however, he did little to determine the relative position of the new land. It is unnecessary, for the present purpose, to detail the various stages by which the conclusions of Behring's first voyage were confirmed and amplified. A later expedition, under the same unflinching captain, set out after an interval of three years, and was prolonged until his death. It succeeded in reaching the 53rd parallel of latitude, discovering the Shumagin Islands and the aborigines. The latter were, in the main, like those of Northern Asia, and though they had never seen SIR JAMES DOUGLAS white men before, they had knives and other articles of iron and copper, which it was supposed they had obtained through trade with the Siberian natives. Behring's final expedition was one of terrible hardships. He was by this time old and imbecile. Worn by sickness and anxiety, he died, on November 28th, 1741, on an island on which his ship had been driven by stress of weather. The island was afterwards named in his honour, as well as the great northern sea and strait in which so much of his activity had been displayed. With Behring were associated Chirikoff, scarcely less unfortunate, and the naturalist Groyers, who also lost his life. The last voyage of Behring had one very important result : it laid the foundations of the trade in furs between Russia and the American continent. In the privations of the expedition, provisions failed, and the crew were forced to subsist for a time on the flesh of sea-otter—" sea beaver " as they were called by the Russians—which they hunted and killed. The skins were preserved, and on the return of the ships brought extravagant prices from the Chinese merchants. News of this character was not long in reaching the ears of the Siberian traders. From this chance beginning, a series of private expeditions were soon racing each other across the Pacific with the object of the new trade in otter. They were continued in ever-increasing numbers over a period of a quarter of a century or more. Incidentally they added much to the knowledge 4Q ^w THE PROMISHLENIKS of the islands between Kamtchatka and Am- ierica. In all the long annals of commercial enterprise, lawful and unrighteous, the traffic of these Russian adventurers has been surpassed in horrors by one and one only—the African slave trade. The vessels were small, many of them built of green planks lashed with deer sinew or thongs of walrus hide to the timbers, and caulked with moss. The traders themselves, known to the Russians as Promish- leniks, were the riff-raff of Siberia, criminals often, though sometimes of noble, even of royal, lineage, amenable only to passion and the law of greed. Being nearly all landsmen, they sailed usually by dead reckoning alone. It is not surprising that numbers of their crazy craft were annually cast away. The crews were the victims of unheard-of cruelties, as well as suffering every conceivable hardship from col#, starvation and disease. In addition, they were attacked and murdered on every available opportunity by the natives, in revenge for the enforcement of levies, the debauching of their women, and the slaughter and enslavement of their men by the traders,—ending in a state of open war that twice wiped Russian settlement from the coast of America. Yet, prompted as were these expeditions by lust and avarice, accompanied by many of the most revolting atrocities that ever disgraced the name of humanity, it is impossible to withhold a tribute of admiration for the energy 41 mi SIR JAMES DOUGLAS til with which voyage after voyage was made, or for the courage, stubborn as it was reckless, displayed by the traders amidst their appalling difficulties. As a matter of fact, the outrages of the place and period were not confined to the Promishleniks, but characterized the whole Russian administration. They were contrary to the express instructions of the government; but, as the Russian proverb said: "God was high in the Heavens, and the Czar was far away." The immediate successor of Peter the Great continued the policy of expansion begun by that sovereign. Synd, Krenitzin and Levaschef commanded explorations to America between 1764 and 1769. The first cargo of furs to enter Canton by ship was carried by a party of Polish exiles who escaped from Kamtchatka, and under the Polish flag cruised through Behring Sea and among the Aleutian Islands. The story of this desperate venture is in itself material for a romance. No expeditions of note followed for some years afterwards. Up to the time of Cook, notwithstanding the number of Russian vessels that had been in Alaskan waters, no exact geographical knowledge had been gained respecting that portion of the coast, and the errors in recorded latitudes and longitudes were sometimes very great. In 1781, Ivan Golikoff, the celebrated Gregory Skelikoff, and other Russian fur merchants, organized themselves into a formal trading associa- 42 THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN COMPANY tion. There was need enough for organization of some sort. Four years after Behring's discovery of the sea-otter, seventy-seven Russian concerns were hunting in the islands of Alaska. This was the beginning of the Alaskan fur monopoly, later to become of international importance. A rival company was formed in 1797, but was soon after absorbed into what was known as the Skelikoff United Trading Company. Still another company was projected in the following year. In 1799, however, the Emperor Paul took all the rival traders under his protection, consolidated their interests, and granted them a charter for twenty years as the Russian American Company, with sole control over the coasts of America north of the 55th parallel of latitude. Their obligations were: to organize settlements; to promote agriculture, trade and discovery; to propagate the Greek Catholic faith; and, without interfering with the rights of other nations, to extend the influence and sovereignty of Russia in the Pacific. The capital was fixed at ninety-eight thousand silver roubles. Without going into details as to this highly organized company which, in the nature and extent of its powers and in the vastness of the territory over which it ruled, resembled the Hudson's Bay Company, it may be stated that its sway was virtually absolute in the country, even to the life of the inhabitants. All persons and property were under the control of the chief director, 43 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS \ who lived in Kadiak, and from whom there was no appeal except to a board of governors far away at Irkutsk. Its regulations were in general just and humane; but their enforcement was entrusted to men with whom justice and humanity were subservient always to interest and expediency, and sometimes to baser passions. Baranoff, one of the most picturesque figures of his time, ruling for twenty years like a despot over the colonies from his castle overlooking the village of Sitka, may be taken as the outstanding type of the local Russian governor, iron-hearted, iron-framed, bold, shrewd, unscrupulous, alternating days of toil with nights of revel on raw and fiery vodka, a Peter the Great in miniature among vagabonds and adventurers. It was part of the policy of Russia, in pursuance of a method already traditional, to establish her power in America to the exclusion of all other nations north of the Spanish zone. To this end, during the regime of Baranoff, Von Resanoff was dispatched to plant Russian colonies at the mouth of the Columbia and on the Californian coast. In this he failed. Searching for the estuary of the Columbia,—at the very time, it may be noted, that Lewis and Clark, the pioneers of discovery overland from the United States, were leaving their winter quarters at Clatsop,—he either missed it altogether or was unable to cross the bar, and so passed on to California. Later, however, m 1812, a 44 LATER RUSSIAN ENTERPRISE Russian colony was established on Bodega Bay by Kuskoff, and was known for many years as the Ross, that is, the Russian, settlement. It continued with varying fortunes until 1841, when it was purchased by the American trader, Sutter, for $30,000. These operations are of importance in the fight of the claim later advanced that the Russian American Company controlled the whole Pacific coast of America and adjacent islands, from Behring Strait to the mouth of the Columbia. That famous company, it may be added, maintained its existence through a long and chequered career, renewing its charter from time to time until 1861, when it fell into decay and was not again revived. A word may be added in completion of this hasty outline. Baranoff died in 1819, broken-hearted by his recall Thereafter, a more enlightened and humane policy was introduced, and many of the old abuses were removed or abated. Baron Wran- gell, who had followed Baranoff as director-general, was succeeded in 1836 by Kuprianoff. In 1840, Adolphus Etoline, a young admiral of noble birth, became governor. The splendour of his rule was in startling contrast with the ways of Baranoff, who lived in Spartan simplicity and ruled without ruffles. In still greater contrast was the luxury of Etoline's castle with the squalor of the village surrounding it. It was Etoline whom Douglas visited as an officer of the Hudson's Bay 45 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Company in 1842, in connection with affairs of business between the two companies. During the period of Russian occupation, and especially between the date of Cook's voyage and the beginning of the nineteenth century, continuous activity was displayed in the exploration of the north-west coast, with more particular reference to the portion now included in Alaska. In addition to the voyages already mentioned, many expeditions of note were undertaken both on private and official initiative. Those of Lastochkin and Pribyloff in 1787; of Ismyloff, Bechareff, and Delareff in 1788; of Joseph Billings and Martin Sauer in 1769 and 1791; of Khwostoff and Davidoff in 1802 ; of Krusenstern and Lisiansky in 1803 and subsequent years ; of Kiskoff in 1808 ; of Kotzebue in 1816 and 1823 ; of Baron Wrangell and Etoline in 1820 and 1822; are worthy of special mention. The most important of all, no doubt, were the explorations of Krusenstern and Lisiansky, of which a full account is given in the journal of Krusenstern himself, a mine of information on all points relating to Russian enterprise on the North Pacific coast. The story of Russia in North America is singularly sordid and unattractive where it is not merely terrible. The stern Alaskan coast has its intervals of warmth and sunshine; but there is no time in the period of Russian sovereignty that is not gloomy and forbidding, overcast with heavy clouds of human suffering and despair. 46 *!! Ji-I THE PASSING OF THE NAVIGATOR In the foregoing pages it has been sought to trace, in outline, the salient features of that long and stirring period during which the coast line of America, stretching for twelve thousand miles from Cape Horn to Behring Sea, became known—at what a price of sacrifice and endeavour!—to human enterprise. The story of the period, it was seen, divided itself naturally into three parts, corresponding in the main with the activities of three great nations,—Spain, Russia and Great Britain. We may include the last even here, because, while her occupation of the middle coast was never until later times as definite as that of her rivals in the north and south, she was finally, after a long interval of diplomacy, to establish herself permanently within her sphere, while the others have vanished from the continent. With Vancouver, the era of discovery came to an end. Thenceforward the field of the explorer was shifted to the Arctic Ocean, where his continued activity is of interest as showing the tenacity with which the British clung to the idea of a north-west passage. Merchant vessels from the United States and other countries continued meanwhile to come and go at intervals. With the establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver in 1824 a regular trade with England, by way of Cape Horn, sprang up. The date of the Beaver, the first steamship in the Pacific, was 1835. The coastwise trade developed later, until, within a few years, as the Pacific became 47 Till II ill SIR JAMES DOUGLAS more and more the meeting place of East and West, the merchant marine employed in its service had multiplied into a powerful fleet. We have now, however, to turn from the tale of seafaring trade and adventure to the pioneers of travel overland, to the scouts and convoys of the fur-traders who, by sled, ox-cart and canoe, opened up, over a network of trails and great rivers as perilous as the ocean itself, a way of communication across the plains and mountains of the west and on to the Pacific. m 48 CHAPTER II THE TRAVELLER OVERLAND IN the record of coastwise exploration, of which a brief account was given in the preceding chapter, it will have been noted that the explorers, if they landed at all, did not ordinarily venture beyond gunshot of the waters whereon their vessels rode, and that the information they brought back related entirely to the configuration of the shore or to the animal fife which teemed in the adjacent seas. The traveller overland was scarcely possible until the sailor had supplied him with a sure objective; but his advent, when at last he came, had a more immediate significance for the country. He came as the forerunner of the trade that had already opened up the whole of the interior continent and that is notable in history for the fierce rivalry with which it sought new worlds to conquer. With the first dip of his paddle in the tumultuous upper waters of the western slope, the hour of civilization for that mighty region may be said to have struck; while with the firm establishment of the fur trade as the dominant local influence we are come at once to a period from which conditions began—tentatively at first, but in accordance with a definite process—to take on the form which was destined to be final. The sailor showed the 49 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS way, but it was the overland traveller who entered in and took possession. There is a wealth of material bearing on this important epoch in the settlement of the continent. The Pacific slope, no less than the border lands of Canada and New England, was the meeting place of many an old-time jealousy ; and many political currents of the great world sent their waves into that distant territory. Europe and the new-born republic lay behind—the immediate fountains of energy; before, was all the glamour of the ancient East, to which, even yet, America could be thought of as a stepping-stone. But our concern must first be with the men whose unconquerable will and daring were needed before any nation could lay claim to the land—with the traveller and the trader who were the first to scale the mighty barrier of the mountains and to penetrate the fertile valleys that lay beyond. It is a singular tribute to tenacity of purpose (the wish being father to the thought) that the search for the North-West Passage furnished a motive hardly less powerful for the earliest expeditions overland than for those that had been undertaken by sea. The firm belief in the existence of an ice- free channel did not end with the conclusive voyages of Cook and Vancouver. In England especially, when almost every other nation had abandoned the pursuit, a stubborn confidence remained. From Frobisher, Gilbert and Davis, 50 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE in the sixteenth century, through Hudson, Barrow and Baffin in the seventeenth, to Ross, Franklin and McClintock in the nineteenth, the tradition on the Atlantic seaboard had been handed on. But, long before the navigator gave over the quest, other agencies had been invoked. One of the most frequent complaints against the Hudson's Bay Company in the eighteenth century was that it had done little to develop the land acquired by its charter, and, especially, that it had made no serious effort to find a shorter route to the Pacific. Hence the expeditions of Hearne, Rae, and Simpson, on behalf of the company, and the discovery of the Coppermine River in 1769. Hence, also, with a shifting of the scene and leading actors, the historic voyage of Alexander Mackenzie to the mouth of the river bearing his name, and his expedition later to the Pacific—efforts fruitless in so far as their immediate objective was concerned, but rich beyond measure in ultimate results for his country and for humanity. The subject proper of this chapter may begin with Mackenzie. It is not necessary in referring to the North-West Company, whose servant Mackenzie was, to do more than mention that it was organized at Montreal in 1784, and that its object was to secure the trade of the remoter Indian territories without fear or favour of the Hudson's Bay Company, a rival with which its members were unable separately to 51 «««it».»g«M!Hfcajy«**itt«i> m lira" SIR JAMES DOUGLAS contend. For the nonce, success attended the venture ; the ancient and more powerful rival was outstripped ; and to the North-West Company fell the honour of being the first to send its men into the country of the Pacific slope. The company was, in effect, a consolidation of the interests of a number of independent merchants, trading across a territory two, and even three thousand miles in extent, and so beset with difficulties that years often elapsed between the first capture and final delivery of the furs. The traffic was carried on through coureurs de bois and voyageurs, that unique and ever fascinating type indigenous to this continent—their home, the forest and the plain ; their instincts, those of the wildest nomad; their pleasures, feasting and song ; their literature—oral, as among all primitive peoples—the chanson and conte ; their calling, hunting and trapping, and the wielding of the paddle and the axe over river and portage. Of such was the domain to which the lad Mackenzie came. Its dominion was the whole boundless west. The portraits of Sir Alexander Mackenzie reveal a personality in which strength of intellect and purpose was suffused and exalted by the imagination which belongs to the true artist. Without rashness or impetuosity, he possessed a will and energy of the most indomitable; and his well-balanced Scottish mind and his instinct for detail enabled him, without danger, to cherish the greatest resolves and to risk the largest undertakings. Of Stornoway parentage, he 52 ALEXANDER MACKENZIE early emigrated to Canada and was bound apprentice to the fur trade. At thirty-four years old, we find him risen to the command of Fort Chipewyan on Athabaska Lake, in the midmost of the vast expanse that lies between Hudson Bay, the Arctic and the Pacific. Mackenzie knew of the discoveries of Hearne and longed, both for his own and his company's fame, to rival or eclipse them. Fort Chipewyan had, in fact, been built as much with discovery as with trade in view. It was from this point, accordingly, that he set out in 1789 to find, and afterward to trace, the great river of the north —the Mackenzie, as he named it in reasonable pride—to its delta in the Arctic Ocean, nearly a thousand miles distant, and to satisfy himself and the world of the futility of seeking a route beyond to the Atlantic. On his return, he had alj ready resolved to attempt the more dangerous passage westward to the Pacific, where " white men wearing armour" were to be met, according to Indian legend, doubtless referring to Quadra's Spaniards. But the task required special preparation ; and Mackenzie deferred its execution until he had visited England, where he made careful study of the narratives of Cook and other navigators and acquired a more perfect knowledge of astronomical instruments. Thus equipped, he returned to Western Canada. Leaving Fort Chipewyan on October 10th, 1792, he set forth on his memorable journey. 53 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS II Iff' The route lay by the Peace River, nine hundred miles to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where Mackenzie erected a fort and spent the winter. By June 12th, 1793, he had ascended that difficult river to its source. Crossing the height of land, he found within a mile of the Peace a small stream flowing southward. This was the Tacouche Tesse, afterwards the Fraser, the mouth of which was already known to the sailors of the Pacific, but which had never been seen inland before. Mackenzie followed its course in the belief that he had found the long-sought river Oregon ; but learning from the natives, some two hundred miles below, that a shorter route to the sea could be taken overland, he retraced his steps to a branch, named afterwards the West Road River, and proceeded for the rest of the journey on foot. On July 20th, at the mouth of the Bella Coola, he came upon the Pacific. It would be hard to overstate the difficulties and dangers as well as the importance of Mackenzie's journey. As the crow flies, over a thousand miles of rugged mountain and treacherous waterway lies between Fort Chipewyan and the Pacific. The wandering of De Soto and his Spaniards in the wild country of the Gulf of Mexico, the crossing of the Rockies by the Astor traders, or the famous ride of Whitman from the Oregon to the city of Washington may equal it perhaps as feats of endurance; yet the self-imposed and unflinchingly executed task of Mackenzie forms a record of courage and resource- 54 HI 1 ACHIEVEMENT OF MACKENZIE fulness such as the annals of few nations can display. Geographically, the voyage was an additional blow —all but the final one—at the notion of a North- West Passage. Mackenzie, gazing at the Pacific after the long battle with the Rockies and the wilderness, is an incomparably greater figure than Balboa—nay, is worthy of being named with Columbus himself. He had penetrated a vast and unknown continent still in a condition of untamed nature and offering every obstacle of rapid river, impenetrable forest, sky-towering mountain, and the extremes of a variable climate. At every step new dangers confronted him. Strange skies or the lodges of hostile savages were his only roof. Tribes who had never before seen white men had to be awed or conciliated. He was many a time face to face with starvation and with the mutiny begotten of despair. His final success was almost a miracle of victory. He is his own historian in a narrative that stands with that of Caesar for simple dignity and plain truthfulness. Napoleon had it translated into French and it became one of his favourite books—an eminent recognition by one master mind of the greatness of another. His body lies in the churchyard of Avoch, beside that of his gifted and beautiful wife, Lady Geddes Mackenzie, who survived until 1860. The stone at his head bears the record of his wonderful life. But his sufficient title to fame was the legend roughly painted by his own hand on a rock on the 55 1 fell — ii W>**JMASrt,JFVW>b>AA.V*'*t*V*,W*SW9 Sg*1ffltfe**iBgiiMH SIR JAMES DOUGLAS shores of the Pacific: "Alexander Mackenzie, from CANADA, BY LAND, THE TWENTY-SECOND OF JULY, ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE." Mackenzie's expedition was the beginning of a new life for the country west of the Rocky Mountains. Out of the territory which he traversed in that famous journey were formed, before a quarter of a century had passed, two great districts—the one, New Caledonia; the other and more celebrated, Oregon. These areas received their titles from circumstances in themselves of interest to history. Nearly all the traders and proprietors of the North-West Company were of Scottish birth or descent, and the region of the Peace, through which the fur trade followed Mackenzie, was named in honour of their rugged native land. By the title of New Caledonia the north-eastern portion, and often the whole, of British Columbia was for a long time known. Strictly speaking, the district occupied a huge triangle, the base of which extended from the southernmost point of Alaska to the Rocky Mountains, containing the greater part of the present districts of Cassiar and Cariboo. The rest of British Columbia was included in the far extending region to the south and west known as Oregon. The meaning and origin of the word are wholly obscure. Jonathan Carver, an early traveller in the interior of the continent, refers in 1779 to the Oregon 56 DAVID THOMPSON River, of which he had heard from the natives, or had read, perhaps, in the narratives of others. Whether Carver invented the name, whether he mistook the title current among the Indians, or whether the word itself has since perished from their language, remains unknown. In process of time the territory westward through which the river was supposed to flow came also to be known as Oregon or the Oregon Territory. Some years later, as we know, a river, the mouth of which had previously been sighted by Heceta the Spaniard, was discovered by Gray of Boston and named the Columbia. Thenceforward the two names, Oregon and Columbia, were applied indifferently to the same vague territory. It happened, accordingly, when the western boundary fine between the United States and Canada was fixed at the 49th parallel, that the country north of it was called British Columbia, to distinguish it from the portion lying south of the fine. Here, for fifty years after the discoveries of Mackenzie, was the scene of action of the men who made the history of the Pacific coast. The day of the navigator, except as an auxiliary to the fur trader and the landsman, had forever passed away. After Mackenzie, the first to enter the interior of British Columbia were David Thompson and Simon Fraser. Both were employees of the North-West Company. Thompson, who was an astronomer, had been previously in the service of the Hudson's Bay 57 '- Hf mi 1 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Company, making surveys of its eastern territories. After joining the rival enterprise, he had travelled north and south throughout the region immediately east of the Rocky Mountains, from the Peace into the heart of the Mandan country, obtaining a general knowledge of the inhabitants and of the state of the fur trade. Combining a scientific training with experience in the methods of commerce, Thompson was invaluable to the company for the work in which he was for so many years engaged. After several ineffectual attempts to cross the mountains south of Mackenzie's point of ingress, Thompson penetrated into the interior of the Bow River Pass, through which the Canadian Pacific Railway now enters the Rockies. This was in 1805. The hostility of the natives soon after compelled his return, but on a second expedition he discovered Howe's Pass, reached the Columbia River, ascended it to its source, and built Fort Kootenay. Thompson, in fact, stands in the highest rank among early travellers in British Columbia. He was the first to explore the Kootenay District ; he was the discoverer of the Athabaska Pass ; he descended the Columbia, (and as far as the Lewis River he was the first to do so,) proclaiming the sovereignty of Britain at the junction of the Spokane, and all but forestalling the establishment of the Astorians at its mouth. But this is to anticipate somewhat. Three years before Thompson had completed his work in 1811 and had returned to Eastern Canada 58 SIMON FRASER (where he ended his days in poverty) Fraser and other members of the North-West Company had achieved an even more signal success in the race for trade, incidentally winning for their country a domain that is one of the most cherished in its possession to-day. As the result of a conference held in 1805 at Fort William, the headquarters of the company, the task of extending its operations to the great new land discovered by Mackenzie had been assigned to Simon Fraser. Ascending the Peace River from Lake Athabaska, in the same season in which Lewis and Clark dropped down to the mouth of the Columbia and wintered there, Fraser confined his first year's efforts to the establishment of two trading-posts on the threshold of the new domain. In 1806, however, he portaged to the Tacouche Tesse, later to be known by his own name—then supposed to be either the Columbia or one of its tributaries—and built two forts, one on what is now Stuart Lake, and a second on the river itself. For still another year Fraser tarried in this region, busied in the firm planting of the company's power. It was at this stage that the territory over which his discoveries extended, and in which the company's operations were now carried on, received the definite title of New Caledonia. We may find an added interest in the man and the district from the fact that not many years afterwards, James Douglas, then a rising officer in the Hudson's Bay 59 Sflh SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Company's service, came upon the same scene, and was one of the most active in the district of which Fraser laid the foundations. But the crowning achievement of Fraser was to follow. What matter if the spur that pricked him on was the jealousy of rival traders ? The fame of the voyage of Lewis and Clark had made clear to the North-West Company how immediate was the need of anticipating another on the north-west coast. Acting on instructions from headquarters, an expedition was fitted out in New Caledonia with the object of extending the company's rule at once to the Pacific. Three men, whose names are forever preserved in the annals of the Pacific slope,—Simon Fraser, John Stuart and Jules Maurice Quesnel,— with a crew of twenty-one, nineteen of whom were voyageurs, embarked on the undertaking. They were in four canoes, and the stream whose unknown reaches lay before them was the Fraser. Those only who have seen the tremendous rapids and cascades, the precipitous side walls and the thousand other dangers of that splendid river, can appreciate the nature of the task that confronted them. The Fraser has been described as a ragged gash in the mountains, by which, in ages gone by, the waters of a great interior sea burst through their barriers of rock to the ocean. The modern traveller gazes in wonder at the thread-like trail cut into the face of the overhanging cliffs, by which at dizzy heights the railway traces the yawning canyons through which the river 60 DESCENT OF THE FRASER hurls itself forward, and is lost in admiration at the daring of the men who carved its tortuous way along the mountains. Even greater was the task of Fraser and his men, who for the first time, without landmark to guide them or knowledge of the country of any kind, and beset by hostile natives, followed the river throughout its length from source to mouth, a distance of seven hundred and fifty miles. Fort George, the point of departure, was left on May, 28th 1808; the journey to tide water was completed on July 1st. To the sea itself Fraser was prevented by the natives from penetrating. Returning, the party arrived at Fort George on August 6th. Thus was accomplished the second epoch-making feat of exploration in British Columbia. It was only less notable than that of Mackenzie himself. The latter had demonstrated that it was possible, though at a fearful price, to reach the Pacific overland. Fraser had proved that the river he had descended was not the Columbia, but an independent stream which fell into the sea over seven degrees further north. It is necessary now to turn to the phase in the development of the Pacific coast which more than all others influenced its political destiny. And here it will be well to define somewhat the relative positions of Great Britain and the United States with respect to the sovereignty of the western continent at the end of the eighteenth century. 61 m SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Up to this time, no nation, certainly neither of the two in question, had established any absolute claim to the country north of Lower California. Drake had harried the Spaniards, and had taken possession of the Californian coast in the name of Elizabeth; British navigators, also, had in later times done more than those of any other nation to determine the northern shore line and to make it known to the world. Spain had to all intents abandoned the field. On the other hand, the United States could claim with justice to have solved the mystery of the Great River of the West. As yet, moreover, there had been no actual occupation of Nootka, and only a nominal possession of Vancouver Island, by Great Britain. The situation, therefore, was chaotic. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, a number of events combined to create an interest in the country west of the Rocky Mountains that commanded order to arise. The question, to which of the two Anglo-Saxon nations the Oregon territory belonged, was slowly formulating itself. At first its utterance was no more than a whisper—a passing word in the halls of diplomacy and state. Forty years before, the capture of Quebec and the subsequent cession of Canada to England had changed the face of politics on the continent. To this had succeeded the American revolution, a counter-change still more momentous. The new conditions, however, did not make themselves felt 62 m THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE at once in the western country. It was not, in fact, until 1803, that any echo of the great events that had happened on the Atlantic was heard on the Pacific. It came then as the result of very special circumstances. In 1762, Spain had ceded to France in perpetuity the whole of the territory of Louisiana. There has already been occasion to remark the vagueness of the region included in that comprehensive term. In the cession of 1762, no attempt was made to dispel the uncertainty; and indeed it would have been impossible. In the following year, a treaty which considerably modified this arrangement was concluded between France and Spain on the one hand, and Great Britain and Portugal on the other, but again not a word was included as to the eastern or western limits of Louisiana, though Great Britain was granted Canada, Florida and the portion of Louisiana f east of the fine drawn along the Mississippi from its source to the River Iberville, thence along the middle of the Iberville and the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea." In the course of events, the territory was again ceded back to France in 1800, and in 1803 passed by purchase into the possession of the United States. Immediately the question of its boundaries arose, this time with an insistence that demanded an answer. Did they extend west of the Mississippi? Did they embrace the whole of the interior plateau to the foot of the Rocky Mountains? Did they extend to the ocean? If so, for how far north 63 >««w«mij>mii %&jm»9mi&m*!va*msm I SIR JAMES DOUGLAS and south? What were the southern limits of British territory? To its earlier possessors, Louisiana had been a word and little more; to the United States it was the gateway to a golden future. Spain and Great Britain were the other nations affected, as the possessors of contiguous territory to the south and north. Spain on the one hand claimed the whole of the territory west of the Mississippi, to which the United States opposed a counter claim to an enormous portion of the coast of the Mexican Gulf. As against Great Britain, the view held was that the 49th parallel of latitude marked the southern limit of British possession. Both of these disputes were postponed for settlement from time to time with results unfortunate to British interests. Varying estimates have been placed upon the character of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and third president of the United States. Whether as a result of Jefferson's personal initiative or of the foresight of his advisers, several notable events occurred within the period of his influence to determine the trend of circumstances unfavourably to British interests beyond the Mississippi. These were: the acquisition of Louisiana, for which Napoleon was paid the sum of $15,000,000; the expedition of Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Columbia River; and the founding of Astoria by the Astor Fur Company. Whoever pointed the way, the foundation 64 THOMAS JEFFERSON was laid in these events for the expansion of the republic across the Mississippi and beyond the Rocky Mountains. While the great mass of the people cared nothing for the west, there were a few who realized its possibilities. Jefferson was undoubtedly one of the latter. Projecting his vision into the future, he saw the hosts of settlers pressing further and further west—beyond the AUe- ghanies; across the Ohio and the Mississippi; along the valleys of the mighty rivers which rise among the foothills of the Rockies; overcoming finally the Rockies themselves, and surging down into the valleys of the Pacific slope; blazing trails that were to become national highroads; building homes, towns and cities; carving out new states of the republic. He saw the possibility of adding another and larger empire to the thirteen states. He saw and he acted. He had read of the overland journey of Mackenzie; he knew that the British flag was being carried by the fur traders across the continent in the north; and he realized not only the possibilities that lay in the fur trade, but that, in the time to come, settled industry would follow the march of the fur brigades, and the solitude of the forest and the plain be broken by the voices of civilization. In the meantime, and while the dream was forming in his mind, the territory of a foreign nation intervened. This obstacle removed, the genius of the American people, it was thought, might be trusted to do the rest. But the Louisiana 65 If ■»*T^>^4'^^i%J^***i>V#,&>»'UW«^*gJW*^^ SIR JAMES DOUGLAS purchase did not fully accomplish the end that Jefferson had in view. The added claim of exploration was still lacking. It was to establish this that Jefferson now equipped the second great expedition to cross the continent. Lewis and Clark, two experienced frontiersmen, were placed in command. As the journey was long and hazardous, and the territory through which it lay unknown, the president took the utmost care to provide against every contingency. The objective was the mouth of the Columbia, to the credit of discovering which the United States already laid claim; but it was by no means certain where the expedition would end. If the Pacific were reached at all, it might be in Spanish, British or Russian territory. The impression was accordingly conveyed that the expedition was in the interests of science and literature alone, and to this end the cooperation of the other nations was sought and obtained. The leaders were supplied with passports by the representatives of the powers at Washington, so that they might travel without hindrance through foreign territory, and were furnished besides with letters of credit for use in foreign ports. At the same time a confidential message was despatched to congress disclosing the real object of the enterprise, which was to strengthen the claim of the United States to the distant west against the day of settling the respective titles of the nations having interests between the Mississippi and the Pacific. The 66 LEWIS AND CLARK ruse was in every detail successful. Not only were the necessary funds forthcoming; but the representatives of the foreign powers at Washington vied with each other in rendering their assistance. The details of this famous expedition are not germane to the present narrative. It was thoroughly equipped, though costing only $2,500; it consisted of forty-five persons; the starting-point was St. Louis and the actual distance travelled amounted to about one-third of the circumference of the globe. The route lay from Illinois through regions since known as Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The main waterways followed on the eastern side of the mountains were the Missouri and the Yellowstone; and on the Pacific side, the Lewis, the Kooskooskee, and the Columbia. The continental divide was surmounted in three places, many miles apart. Though great hardships were often encountered, and sometimes suffering and immediate peril, there was but one life lost. The expedition occupied over two years, from May, 1804 until August, 1806, during which time all communication with the outside world was suspended and an immense mass of exact information respecting this hitherto unexplored territory was made available. Lewis and Clark wintered at Fort Clatsop, on the Pacific Coast. This great expedition, so successfully brought to an end, was not the only one that Jefferson had in 67 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS mind; but the futile mission of John Ledyard to Russia and the ignoble ending of the project of Andre' Michaux, for which Lewis volunteered, call for no special comment. In the fight of events, it is unnecessary to emphasize the momentous consequences which flowed from the Louisiana purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Seldom has appreciation more acute of the greatness of an opportunity been seen in history; seldom has the wisdom that divined possessed the power to execute in equal measure. Jefferson was the prototype of American diplomacy; Lewis and Clark were the prototypes of the men who followed its voice and reaped its harvest. The logical sequel of the journey of Lewis and Clark was the formation in 1810 of the Pacific Fur Company by John Jacob Astor of New York. The organization has been made a name in literature by Washington Irving. Astor had risen from humble circumstances to great wealth and political influence. He was the friend of Jefferson, and the project of extending the territory of the United States westward, doubtless owed much to his encouragement. Appreciating to the full, from his intimate association with the fur trade, the value to commerce of the territory west of the Mississippi, Astor's ambition was to obtain for himself a sphere of influence in the United States similar to that possessed by the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies in British America. Not less anxious 68 » THE PACIFIC FUR COMPANY was he, for the same reason, to see the 49th parallel extended to the Pacific Ocean as the dividing line between the two countries. There can be little question that when the Lewis and Clark expedition was decided upon, it was with the entire concurrence of Astor. From Irving, who deals at length with Astor's aims and methods, we learn of the close relationship which existed between him and the administration; it is not, therefore, far to seek for the inspiration of Jefferson's policy. Astor, the rival of the British fur companies, was the only man of his time who had an overpowering self-interest in extending the United States westward to the Pacific. The Pacific Fur Company was not the first organization of its kind, but it was the first which carried out its aims in accordance with a comprehensive plan combined with practical business experience and ability. The operations which it immediately set on foot partook of the nature of a national effort to counterbalance the success of the British companies and divert the fur trade from Montreal to New York. Thus, though its object was in the main a business one, it had, at the same time, many features that appealed to wider sympathy and support. The main features of Astor's project, as embodied in his company, involved the establishment of a line of posts along the Missouri and the Columbia to the mouth of the latter, where the chief trading depot of the company was 69 .I w*jjb»j-Aagg«aaL*JtassE!eaLW».*ft<»-iwieE is*tim*miimm&ficmi SIR JAMES DOUGLAS to be situated. Subsidiary posts were to be set up in the interior and on the tributary streams of the Columbia to trade with the Indians; these would draw their supplies from the main establishment and bring to it the peltries they collected. Coasting vessels would be built and fitted out on the Columbia, to trade, at favourable seasons, along the north-west coast, and to return with the proceeds of their voyages to the place of deposit. In this way the entire Indian trade, both of the interior and of the coast, would converge at the mouth of the Columbia. A ship was to be sent annually from New York with reinforcements, supplies, and merchandise suited to the trade. It would take on board the furs collected during the preceding year, carry them to Canton, invest the proceeds in the rich stuffs of China, and return thus freighted to New York. What was of importance in the scheme was the development of trade with the Russian establishments on the north-west coast. This suggested many possibilities. As a prenminary step, a staff experienced in the Indian trade and inured to life in the wilderness was necessary. This was recruited in Montreal. Three prominent employees of the North-West Company were among those who accepted the terms of Astor. A personal representative and chief agent was appointed. The Pacific Fur Company was then formally incorporated and the work of organization perfected to its final details. 70 ASTORIA The expedition which it was determined at once to send out for the realization of these plans was divided into two parties ; one to proceed in the ship Tonquin by way of Cape Horn to the Columbia; the other to follow in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark across the continent. The quarrels of the members of the party on the Tonquin with her captain ; the final loss of the Tonquin and the murder of her crew by the natives at Clayoquot; the sending of a second ship from New York ; and the terrible sufferings of the overland party under Hunt, are familiar history. The establishment of Astoria and its varying fortunes need not detain us here. By a series of mishaps it soon passed into the possession of the North- West Company. Irving assigns the failure of the enterprise primarily to the loyalty of the employees to Great Britain and their former masters the North-West Company. There is force possibly in the contention. The final blow was the War of 1812. When peace was declared, Fort Astoria was ceded back to the United States, though without prejudice to the rights of Great Britain to the territory in which it was situated. The Pacific Fur Company, however, made no further attempt to carry out the projects of Astor; and the North-West Company, and subsequently the Hudson's Bay Company, continued in virtual occupation of the fort until the settlement of the boundary dispute in 1846. The 71 mm SIR JAMES DOUGLAS abiding importance of the experiment lies in the fact that the occupation of the Columbia by the Astorians was put forward at the time of the settlement of the boundary question as one of the strongest claims in behalf of the United States. This international aspect of the case will be referred to later in the present volume. It may be well to recapitulate in proper sequence the five great transcontinental expeditions of these early times as follows:—(1) The expedition of Alexander Mackenzie, by the Tacouche Tesse and Bella Coola Rivers, in 1793. (2) The expedition of Lewis and Clark, by the Missouri and the Columbia Rivers, in 1805. (3) The expedition of Simon Fraser, by the river which bears his name, formerly the Tacouche Tesse, in 1808. (4) The expedition of David Thompson, by the Columbia River, in 1811. (5) The overland expedition of the Astorians in 1811. Among the most glorious in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, these great achievements must, for the moment, be remembered in their special and less happy significance: as shedding light upon the bitter rivalry which was to follow---of which indeed they were already the beginning—between the mother and the daughter countries for the continent so dauntlessly won for their common civilization. It has now been shown, however briefly, by what steps the Pacific coast first became known to the world; and it has been noted, also, how the over- 72 i-fr THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY land explorer completed the work of the navigator. The fur trader, it has been seen, was the first to enter the new country as other than a spy or adventurer, and his forts and depots were the first roofs, as his trafficking with the Indians was the first act of commerce, in the great interior. The remainder of this chapter may be fitly devoted to a statement of certain broad and salient features in the life and methods of this striking type as it existed during the first fifty years of the last century. These were the days of the trader in the full flush of his glory, and the recital of his leading characteristics, however familiar, is necessary to give a background to the succeeding narrative. In this it will be understood that the reference throughout is to the Hudson's Bay Company, which in 1821, after a struggle which had ended in armed hostilities and the effusion of blood, absorbed the North-West Company, and from that time forward, retaining only what seemed best in its former constituent bodies, completely dominated the trade and the life of the western country. How the great enterpise—" the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay,"—came to birth in the revival of mercantile activity which followed the restoration of King Charles II ; how Rupert, Prince of England and Bohemia, dashing cavalier and patron of commerce, became its founder ; how the powers con- 73 T SIR JAMES DOUGLAS ferred upon it in that lavish age included, in addition to the " whole, entire and only liberty of Trade and Traffick," the absolute ownership of a third part of North America, with authority to frame laws, administer justice, wage war or make peace therein ; how its early servants planted its rule on the edge of the wilderness amid difficulties that would have driven back any but the most determined of men; how through a century and a half of steady progress—of bloody wars with the French, implacable rivalries with other traders, thrilling adventures and vicissitudes innumerable— it drove its purposes to a victorious end, sending out its explorers on journeys that gave a new face to the continent, naming some of the greatest rivers and mountains of the earth, spreading step by step the arteries of its trade and the empire of its flag over thousands of miles, and over thousands of souls; civilizing sometimes, corrupting and degrading often, bartering continually ;—all these varied and commanding activities combine to form an episode unrivalled for the romantic and the picturesque in our history. The general system under which the company carried on its multiform and far-extending business has been many times described. In the manner in which it adapted means to ends it could have little to learn from the largest enterprise of modern days. The minuteness of the trade and the tremendous distances which it traversed rendered necessary a 74 I THE FUR TRADE method of accounting, at once the most elaborate and exact. For organization purposes, the vast dominions of the company were divided into four great departments. These were again divided into districts. Each district had its fixed and permanent trading-posts, as well as a number of temporary or flying stations, the latter frequently the precursors of the former. Here were the vital points of contact between the company and the trade from which it drew its life's blood: here the traders met and bartered with the Indians. Important posts or parties, together with the transportation service, were in the charge of chief clerks ; a lower grade of employees managed the outlying stations. The districts were under the chief traders. In the departments, dep6ts and distributing points were presided over by the factors, while over all the chief factor bore rule. An army of postmasters, interpreters, mechanics, guides, canoemen and apprentices made up the rank and file, though even here degrees were strictly recognized. In general terms, the service was made up of three classes; the servants, the clerks and apprentices, and the officers. The second class sat at the officers' mess and were addressed as gentlemen. But the officers were the real oligarchy, bound by special covenant to fidelity, and receiving their reward not in salary but in a share of the company's profits. Subject to the orders of his superior and the regulations of the company, each officer was supreme in his sphere of duty. The system, as will 75 EEHEES33SE, SIR JAMES DOUGLAS be seen, was military in its absolutism. The chief factor was lord paramount ; his word was law, to support and symbolize which the office was enveloped in a halo of dignity. When a chief factor transacted the most ordinary business, his habiliments were elaborate and imposing ; when he travelled, it was in state, with a retinue by whom he was lifted in and out of his conveyance, his arrivals and departures heralded by the firing of salutes. High above all reigned the governor of the company, a personage scarcely less exalted than the most absolute of sovereigns, owing allegiance to no one save the directorate in London, whose policy, as a matter of necessity, was largely dictated by his advice. Great indeed was the majesty that hedged about a governor of the company. But the show was no greater than the reality, though part of a deliberate plan to overawe the natives and subordinates where rebellion or mutiny would have meant extinction. It succeeded in so far as the immediate object was concerned ; but, as examples show, it had sometimes an unhappy effect upon the ruler. The company's Western Department, with which the present narrative has chiefly to do, included the entire region between the watershed of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, bounded on the north by Russian territory and the Northern Department (the latter embracing the country drained by the rivers running into the Arctic Ocean and Behring Sea) and on the south by the Mexican 76 FORT VANCOUVER republic. Roughly, it extended a thousand miles in length, by half that distance in average width. The depot for the department was, in the early days, at Fort Vancouver, a post of considerable size (its stockade measuring 750 feet in length by 600 feet in breadth) situated on the Columbia River six miles above its junction with the Willamette. Afterwards it was removed to Victoria. Here the company's goods were received from abroad for distribution throughout the coast and the interior. Here were collected the furs as they were sent in by the traders for subsequent transportation to England around Cape Horn. Here, too, were the headquarters of the chief factor and the heart of the official life of the region. While Fort Vancouver remained the depdt for a period of some twenty-three years, the districts north of the Columbia landed their supplies at the mouth of the Okanagan, and packed them on horses thence to their destination. For the service of the other districts, lying nearer the coast, the furs and goods were carried to and from the Fraser River. Goods for the Upper Columbia and Kootenay were landed at Fort Colville near the Rocky Mountains; those for the Snake River were landed at Walla Walla. The former became in time the centre of all the trade on the Columbia—the last post touched at by the brigades on their long journey from Fort Vancouver to Norway House. The coast ports were supplied by sailing vessels, the 77 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS returning boats and vessels bringing in the furs collected at the several ports. The trade in New Caledonia, and in what is now known as the Yukon in the Northern Department, was carried on by way of the Athabaska route, of which the forts on Hudson Bay were the entrepots. The activity of the company in the Western Department was by no means restricted to the trade in peltries. In process of time, large farms were established in the vicinity of Victoria, on Puget Sound, in the Willamette valley and in other parts of the country. The trade in horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and general farm produce, soon attained importance. The erection of grist mills, sawmills, tanneries and dairies followed. A considerable fishing industry sprang up. Within a few years, the ships of the company were regularly exporting flour, grain, beef, pork and butter to the Russian settlements in Alaska and Siberia, lumber and fish to the Sandwich Islands, and hides and wool to England. The company was the first to open the coal mines of Vancouver Island, at Fort Rupert first and later at Nanaimo. The wants of its own communities and of the vessels of the coast furnished the original incentive; but the sale of a thousand tons to a vessel bound for California, during the height of the minhig excitement, proved the inauguration of a trade that has since become of first importance to the district. It was, in fact, the proportions reached by the general commerce 78 NATURAL RESOURCES of the department; even at an early stage of its development, and the industries thus founded and nourished, that first attracted the attention of the outside world to the potentialities of the Pacific coast, the result being a gradual process of settlement that eventually extinguished the company's rule. The debt that is owing to the men who were the first to recognize in the natural resources of the country still greater possibilities than existed in the gathering of peltries—even though they could not clearly foresee the effect that was to follow for the company whose servants they were—is one that could not easily be overestimated. Had they followed tamely in the footsteps of precedent; had they lacked sagacity to perceive the wealth that lay in the fertile valleys, the teeming rivers and the timber-clad hillsides of the vast dominion whose present destiny they shaped at will, they might have purchased for the great master of their allegiance a few doubtful years of the power to barter " skin for skin " ; but they would have thrown back the progress of the coast at least a quarter of a century, and they would have missed the opportunity of conferring upon their country a boon far beyond the gift of any corporation bound to a single and narrow circle of activity. A word may be added as to the treatment accorded by the company to the Indians,—its equals in trade, its benefactors even, but with all the 79 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS pathetic helplessness of an inferior race. There can be no doubt that the company was, before everything else, a keen trader. It took the Indian as it found him—and it kept him so. To be a hunter and a wanderer was the Indian's nature; he would have been useless to the company had he been otherwise. There was no effort, accordingly, to civilize him,—none, for almost two centuries, to christianize him. But he received justice—or what he thought was justice—even kindness, dictated though both were by policy. To gain the Indian's confidence was a necessity of the trade; and the company made sure of this. In two centuries of rule over tribes of every shade of racial difference, ranging from the Eskimos of the Labrador and Arctic coasts, through the Crees, Sioux and Blackfeet of the interior, to the polyglot chaos of tribes that dwelt along the Pacific Ocean, war was unknown and violence and bloodshed only an occasional incident. Thousands of miles from any force of arms, trade was carried on in scores of factories in perfect trust. The coast tribes of the Western Department were perhaps more truculent and excitable than any on the continent, yet here as elsewhere Indian outrage was comparatively unknown. The manner in which intercourse between the trader and the Indian was held had much to do with this result. Respect was always paid to fairness in exchange. Docile as the Indian was, and avid of the goods that made his barren existence happier, this was no difficult task. In other respects an equal dis- 80 _.' THE INDIANS cretion was displayed. The relations established were ever those of reserve ; familiarity was permitted on no pretext, though firmness was tempered with tact, courtesy and the constant expression of good-will. The frequent intermarriages of traders with native women did much to secure the good feeling of the Indian, and to further the interests of the company. That some of the traders were profligate must be admitted ; that rum found its way into the trade has been proved; but in these, as in other matters, the law of self-preservation was the constant monitor of the company. In the summing up, history will accord thanks to the company for the fruits of its attitude towards the Indian. Without that preparation of the Indian mind, the peaceful settlement of the country would have been impossible. When the hour of the fur trade had struck and the settler stood at the gateway of the mountains, he found a native race subdued to the methods of the white man, and ready to play its part in the new order. The Indian is to-day a more important factor in the labour market of British Columbia than of any other portion of the Dominion. Of the life that went on beneath the extraordinary surface of the company's system and policy, who could give even a glimpse in a page? It was a world in itself, so romantic and full of wonders that every fireside has listened to the story of it. Over half a continent it embraced scenes the most varied and 81 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS sublime on the earth—the forest growth of ages, pathless and impenetrable ; the endless prairie, roamed by millions of bison ; mountain lands unrivalled for wildness and grandeur; all alike interlaced by one of the most beautiful and majestic chains of waterways in the world, running down into the everlasting sea which bore the company's trade to its ultimate markets. Dotting the wilderness, hundreds of miles apart, were the " forts " or trading-posts of the company, whence it drew sustenance and by which it kept its grasp upon the land. Even these were stamped with individuality. Built, large and small, upon a common plan—a low and quadrangular centre structure surrounded by high palisades, flanked by bastions and defended by six-and twelve-pounders—they aptly proclaimed the rigour that ruled within. This was no less than martial law, to transgress which was punished with swift and ruthless severity, and from which the only seasons of respite came at Christmas and the New Year, or on the days, many months apart, on which news and letters were brought from the outside world—sunbursts of joy that made their recurrence the chief solace of an existence unparalleled for monotony and isolation. The brigades were the agents of this beneficence, the tie that bound the forts together, and constituted the veins and arteries of the system. In summer they came with goods in " York boats,"—nine tripmen to each, and eight boats to the brigade,—or by cart and cayuse over 82 LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS the prairie ; in winter they brought only letters and newspapers by sledge and snowshoe, the gaily caparisoned dog trains making forty miles a day over the snow, sheltering under trees and bushes, and covering once a year the entire round of the company's trading-posts. But the real bond of union was the comradeship of the service which laid its spell (or its terror) upon all, the essence of which, for rude and polished alike, was its touch upon the aboriginal and the elemental in both wild and human nature. In such a setting, fife took on varied forms. The man of mighty will turned all to power, triumphing over difficulties that subdued and appalled others, and rose because he could do nothing else. Others in whom the flame burned less fiercely, adapted themselves to their surroundings and hewed out paths of useful effort Others were broken utterly, consuming their hearts m the awful toil and loneliness until death or madness came. The roll of honour in the company's western service is a long and illustrious one. From 1805 to 1846, and in British Columbia until 1858, the fur trader ruled on the coast. It was not an absolute sway: the settler arrived early to dispute it; and the half-century was one of conflict and evolution. Simpson, Ogden, Ermatinger, McDonald, McLeod, Tod, Yale, Dallas, Finlayson, Anderson, Black, McKay, Ross, Campbell, Murray, Dease, Rae, Tolmie, Grahame, are some of those who bore 83 HWmtSfcgglEiifcB SIR JAMES DOUGLAS a share, in the early and formative period, in directing the energies and moulding the destinies of the country, each in his own field and method. Their impress can never be obliterated. But from the fist of all that generation two names stand out preeminently in the history of the upbuilding of the Pacific Slope—McLoughlin and Douglas. Occasion more than once will be offered in the following pages to note the striking personality of the former of these great men. He was the founder and the patriarch—the first great leader of the company in Oregon. He made the career of Douglas, who was his friend and follower, possible. The superior of his disciple in all that touched the human and the lovable; magnetic, impulsive, eager; Napoleonic in the swiftness of his judgments and of his movements to execute them; resolute, brave and chivalrous, McLoughlin was swept from his feet in the end by a movement that struck at his emotions and his sense of right—the right of the mass as opposed to that of an individual interest. He could not, or he would not, stem the tide of settlement from the United States, so fatal to the company's and, as it proved, to his country's future. And when, in 1846, the land north of the Columbia to the 49th parallel passed to the United States, he went with it, divorced from an allegiance to which his whole life had been devoted. Douglas, his successor, less keen and restless; of an order of genius that had less 84 McLOUGHLIN AND DOUGLAS perhaps of fire and humanity but more of purpose and obedience; studious, orderly, tactful and resourceful; commanding a rigid respect and admiration, if not love; one at all times master of himself and his surroundings, was undoubtedly the greater officer, if not the greater man. Of the two, Douglas must always remain of larger interest to the historian. He came into command at a moment of supreme importance in the period of rapid transition from old to new conditions, for which McLoughlin had opened the door. Unshackled by doubts of any kind, he was in a special degree qualified to deal with developments which he could not wholly control, but which he could influence powerfully in the direction of the company's interests, while at the same time clearly foreseeing that they must result in a new order wherein the company would cease to be a ruling factor. It was in truth to this last point that the enterprise of the fur trader in building forts to be the centres of future settlement; in opening lines of communication throughout the interior to be the avenues of future commerce; and in the bringing of ships to the coast depots to establish intercourse with the outside world, inevitably converged. Even a less clear-sighted observer than Douglas could not but see in the movements which drove the company out of Oregon and which planted a colony in the valley of the Red River, something that portended the ultimate extinction of its 85 r pfi 3f .' SIR JAMES DOUGLAS sovereignty in the west and the erection of popular government in its stead. Of never-fading interest in themselves the fives of the traders in the wilds of the interior and on the shores of the Pacific must always remain. That strange and varied period is a subject, probably, of which the ground has been no more than broken. McLoughlin was of it, and his lamp was extinguished when the trade passed away. Douglas too was of it, blood and bone; but he was something more. As has been said, our interest in the fur trade is for the fruits it bore in subsequent history. We have to watch its huge and tireless mechanism as, in measured process, James Douglas, the most notable figure which it produced in the country west of the Rocky Mountains, rose step by step to the post of chief command, thence, by the inevitable sequence of events, as the company gave place to civil government, to become the first representative of the Crown in a British colony on the Pacific Ocean. 86 CHAPTER III NEW CALEDONIA CONCERNING the early life of Sir James Douglas, little is known. He was not in his youth a keeper of diaries, and there are few records of the long period of his apprenticeship to the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies, prior to his assumption of command at Fort Vancouver. The generation which knew him in the flesh has passed away. In the family circle he was not a purveyor of official small news. Neither was he given to reminiscence or to talk of himself or of his exploits. When he passed from the scene he did not leave behind him a single purely personal record either of his actions or of the opinions and early experiences on which they were based.1 This might at first appear remarkable in a man who at all times so fully recognized the importance of his position in so far as mere forms were concerned. How seriously he could consider this aspect is well illustrated in a letter which he wrote in May, 1859, to the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. It was evident that he could not occupy the dual position of governor of the Pacific colonies and representative of the company, and it was necessary, therefore, that he should retire from the 1A journal kept by Douglas at Fort Vancouver, quoted by Bancroft, has disappeared. 87 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS service of the latter. This he was willing to do, conditional on the payment of £3,500 as a retiring interest: "In the event of the rejection of that offer pie wrote], I must resign my office of governor, as the salary offered, £1,800 per annum, is altogether inadequate to my support in a becoming manner. "As a private individual I can live in a style befitting the fortune I possess; but as governor for the Crown, there is no choice: one must live in a manner becoming the representative of the Crown, and I could never consent to represent Her Majesty in a shabby way." The fact is that the manner of a chief factor clung to him to the last in governmental, company, and domestic relations. This was second nature to all Hudson's Bay Company officials. Douglas, however, was to an exceptional degree steeped in the ceremonial of official life, and the fact has led to not a little misinterpretation of his character. The fondness of display and the autocratic methods with which he has been charged were in fact the natural outcome of his long and devoted service to an organization famed the world over for its iron discipline, joined to the trait which he displayed from first to last of taking high and serious ground even in small things. His early training, acting upon a spirit essentially religious, shaped his whole after career to this pattern of conduct and bearing. It would have been easy for a nature, nourished as 88 L HIS RETICENCE his had been in mountain solitudes to exaggerate the importance of command. Yet Douglas was remarkable throughout his whole career for nothing more than for his sane self-knowledge. An evidence that his self-assertiveness was on the surface merely may be deduced from the fact that he failed entirely to foresee the interest which the historian would one day attach to his life and personality. He did not apparently realize that, as a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Pacific coast for many years, and as the first governor of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, he was moulding future events and must one day stand as the central figure of his time. Official statements he put forth in plenty; but the record of his life, as a whole, as throwing light upon the most interesting half century in western history, he invariably refused to compile, nor could he ever be brought to see anything in the success he had achieved which would add interest to his personal opinions or actions. A natural repugnance to publicity in part accounted for this. He was a man of great reserve, though of strong passions and deep feelings. But, above all, the unwritten law of the company stood in the way; it is easy to appreciate how such an obstacle appealed to James Douglas. Unbroken silence on all matters of its internal economy, is the rule of the company for its servants. Reminiscences, even of the purely literary kind, were never encouraged; 89 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS and there are volumes of unwritten history in the archives of the company to-day, which have never become accessible to the student. Of those invaluable aids to the historian, therefore, —the memoir, the sheaf of letters, the diary, written solely from the personal standpoint,—we have few at hand, in the early years especially, for use in writing the life of Sir James Douglas. The loss is great. With the events of the period during which he ruled on the coast, he was more familiar than any other man. A history by Douglas of the fur trade in the country west of the Rocky Mountains, or of the early colonial period on the Pacific, would have been a document the most valuable of its kind. As a lover of biography, and a careful student of politics, he might have been expected to employ the leisure of his later years in literature and to have enriched it from his own unique experience. He was possessed, besides, of a gift of style, as his State papers show. That he passed from the scene in silence is one of the most striking instances we have of a not uncommon phenomenon—the indifference of the men who bore the brunt of the early battle with the wilderness, and who solved the earliest problems of social organization and government, to everything but the practical and immediately important side of the events in which they played so large a part. The greatest of men are creatures of circumstance; but they are also springs of action; and what 90 BIRTH AT DEMERARA we commonly term destiny is often only a convenient word for the complex relationship of man and his environment. Political history, thus conceived, becomes the biography of the makers of nations. Every man is the product of his age ; but every age is what its greatest men have made of it. It is in this spirit that the present life of Douglas, shorn largely from necessity of personal detail, has been written. He, more than any other man, gave form to British Columbia. As the legend in the great London cathedral bids the reader look around if he would see the monument of him whose mind conceived the majestic pile; so, if one would seek a measure of the achievement of Sir James Douglas, let him behold the fair province of the mountains and the Pacific, whose sturdy growth bore in its early fashioning the lasting impress of his handiwork. The life of Douglas, therefore, serves as no other would for text from which to hang a connected narrative of the origin and progress of British Columbia, youngest perhaps of all the provinces in that her present but feebly foreshadows her great future, yet bringing our history into vital touch with the far-off time of the greatness of Spain, beginning even with that fateful day on which Balboa first "Stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent upon a peak in Darien." James Douglas was born at Demerara, British Guiana, August 15th, 1803. His father was a de- 91 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS scendant of the Earl of Angus, the "Black Douglas" of Scottish history. Little is known of the father's youth or parentage, except that he was the son of one John Douglas, merchant, of Glasgow. A search of the Registry Office at Edinburgh reveals nothing of his earlier ancestry, John Douglas being a familiar name and frequently appearing in the Glasgow records. Lieutenant-General Sir Neil Douglas, K.C.B., colonel of the 78th Regiment, who took part in the battles of Busaco, the Pyrenees, Seville and Toulouse, and whose gallantry on the field of Waterloo obtained for him the Austrian order of Maria- Theresa and the Russian order of St. Vladimir, was a cousin of James Douglas and has been described as the "fifth son of the late John Douglas, Esq., of Glasgow, whose grandfather, Douglas of Cruxton and Stobbs, descended lineally from the famous Earls of Angus." The lineage of Douglas was well known to his companions of the fur company, and he went for many years by the sobriquet of the "Black Douglas," a title for which his swarthy skin and stern cast of features was in part responsible. James was taken at an early age to Scotland, where he was educated in a private school at Lanark. He was a studious youth, conscientious and of regular habits, traits which characterized him through life. We are indebted to family tradition for the statement that his French tutor was 92 *» ENTERS NORTH-WEST COMPANY an exiled nobleman of France who was the means of furnishing an accomplishment which Douglas was soon after to turn to very practical account. In a new country, engaged in a trade which brought him into daily contact with the French-Canadian voyageur, it was the most immediately useful part of his education. Nearly all the Hudson Bay traders spoke French fluently, and when Sir James made a tour of the continent after his retirement as governor, he was still able to converse in French with a good accent. It was in the year 1820 that Douglas left Scotland to seek his fortune in the service of the North- West Company. The origin of his choice of a career is in obscurity, but two brothers appear to have preceded him in the same field. Although in his seventeenth year only, he was already tall and well developed, "with ideas beyond his age." That he had courage to leave kith and kin to plunge into the wilderness of the New World goes without saying. He reported at Fort William, the headquarters of the company, then under the rule of the celebrated John McLoughlin, who seems to have been struck immediately with the promise of the lad. But the career thus launched was destined to an early interruption. In 1821, the North-West Company was absorbed by the Hudson's Bay Company (in what manner need not delay us here), and Douglas was of the party which regarded the terms of union with dissatisfaction. He 98 : SIR JAMES DOUGLAS was on the point of returning to Scotland with his brothers, when McLoughlin persuaded him to throw in his lot with the new regime. The friendship of the older for the younger man, which was to bear such rich fruits later, was already firmly planted, in the soil of a warm and appreciative nature on the one hand, and of sterling merit on the other. McLoughlin was to have charge, under the new arrangement, of the vast territory lying west of the Rocky Mountains, then termed the Columbia Department, and he wrote to the directory to ask that Douglas might accompany him. The request was granted. In less than two years service, and before he had reached his twentieth year, Douglas had won the trust and friendship of the man who ruled an empire equal in area to a third of Europe and, though still in a state of savage nature, rich beyond measure in political and industrial possibilities. Great indeed was the opportunity; as will be seen, no part of it was thrown away. McLoughlin had had a history of his own which is typical of the day and place. Born in 1784 at Riviere du Loup, he had lost his father while still a boy, and had grown up with his brother David in the gray stone mansion of his grandfather, Malcolm Fraser, overlooking the St. Lawrence where it widens to the sea. The children early caught a military bearing from the grandsire who had brought a Highland regiment to Canada and who had 94 john McLoughlin settled later on a St. Lawrence seigniory. It was a discipline, too, of a thoroughly Scottish savour. Scottish books were read ; Scottish tales were told; the bagpipes droned in the hall; and the kilts were often worn. When the boys grew up, they were sent overseas, destined to the study of medicine at Edinburgh. But Napoleon had begun the war with England, and David fled his gallipots to follow the Iron Duke to Waterloo. John took another course. "I never could fight Napoleon-—I admire him too much," he said, and returned to Canada. Arrived there, he had still his future before him. A story is told of the incident which sent him into the service of the North-West Company—a quarrel with an English officer who had shown discourtesy to a lady on the streets of Quebec. But his uncles were high in the company, and the life might have appealed to him on other grounds. Birth, talent, and, above all, his splendid presence, brought rapid promotion. His first important command was at Sault Ste. Marie: it was in McLoughlin's time that the post was burned during the War of 1812. Here he had married the widow of his friend McKay. (McKay had crossed the continent with Alexander Mackenzie and had been one of those engaged by Astor in Montreal for his venture on the Pacific—a voyage from which McKay never returned, having been slain by the Indians on the ill- fated Tonquin.) Thence he passed to Fort William* 95 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the metropolitan post of the company, then in its time of greatest splendour,—his hair white before he was thirty from an accident in Lake Superior, in which all but himself were lost. Of the remainder of his life there will be more in the sequel. It was a part of McLoughlin's plans for Douglas, when, on the amalgamation of the companies, the faces of the two were turned westward, that he should not be confined too closely to any one branch, but that by a succession of duties he might become conversant with the entire range of the service. Consistent with his duty to the company, McLoughlin seems to have spared no favour that inured to the advancement of his protege'. Douglas was already an excellent accountant; he had moreover a thorough command of the language of the voyageur. The time was come, therefore, when he must learn at first hand the ponderous yet minute organization by which the operations of the united companies were conducted in the field. New Caledonia, the nucleus from which the present province of British Columbia was to evolve, was at the moment the most distant and difficult of McLoughlin's outlying departments. To New Caledonia, accordingly, went Douglas, after an interval spent with McLoughlin himself in the Atha- baska district, for the very sake of the difficulties which offered there and the experience to be gained in encountering them. This was in 1823 or 1824. 96 M NEW CALEDONIA A glance at the natural conditions and the state of development which awaited the young trader in New Caledonia will be of interest here. Dotted with innumerable lakes; thridded by a network of rivers, with the Fraser for central waterway; hemmed in and intersected throughout by mountains, clad in the south with the Douglas fir and in the north with spruce and pine; New Caledonia embraced, roughly, the whole of the territory between the Rockies and the coast range of mountains, from the valley of the Thompson on the south to the northern sources of the Peace. The interminable forest with which the district was covered yielded no food save berries, roots, and the flesh of animals; but the lakes and rivers abounded in fish and waterfowl. From time immemorial the region had been peopled by the western Dene Indians, the main branches of which were the Nahanais and Sekanais in the extreme north and east, the Babines and Carriers in the west and centre, and the Chilcotins in the south and west. They, as well as the white men who first entered the country, depended almost wholly upon the salmon for their food, so much so that the damming of a stream by a fall of rock would cause an entire tribe to remove. How Mackenzie discovered and how Fraser took possession of the country, has been already described. Rocky Mountain Portage, the first post of Fraser, was built in 1805. McLeod, the first permanent station ever erected in British 97 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Columbia west of the mountains, still standing without a year of interruption, had been established soon after. The discovery of Stuart Lake followed; and Fort St. James, destined as the d£pot of the new district, arose on its banks in one of the most beautiful spots of that land of surpassing natural beauty. Fort Fraser, on Fraser Lake, and Fort George, on the Fraser River, were built in the same year. For three years longer, which included the famous descent of the great central river, the pioneers of the company laboured on the foundations of the new district. In 1809, Fraser returned east, to assume command in 1811 of the Red River Department. Too poor to accept the knighthood which was offered to him, he died in 1862 at the great age of eighty-six. Stuart, the right hand, according to some the brain, of Fra- ser's enterprise, succeeded him in New Caledonia, with Harmon as first lieutenant. Stuart was still in command on the amalgamation of the companies in 1821, and to a large extent directed the expansion and multiplication of posts which immediately followed. Kamloops, the centre of the Thompson River district, had been built in 1813, the year in which communications were first established between the Columbia and the Fraser; and in 1821 the building of Fort Alexandria, on the Fraser, still further facilitated the bringing in of supplies by the new route from the south instead of by the old and laborious passage from the east. Babine, famous for its salmon, on the northern lake of the same name, 98 te EARLY TRADING POSTS was built in the following year, and Chilcotin, an outpost of Alexandria, situated among a tribe notable for its ferocity, about the same time. In 1824, however, the year from which the connection of Douglas with New Caledonia is dated, Stuart withdrew to the Mackenzie, and in his stead William Conolly, an Irishman of long experience in the trade, was appointed chief factor. Douglas who had been placed under the command of the new officer while McLoughlin went forward to the Columbia, was of the party which accompanied Conolly across the mountains when the latter first took office. With them were the wife and half-breed family of the chief factor, a convoy of twenty-four men, and the usual quota of supplies for the district. At the time of Douglas's arrival, three clerks whose names are of frequent appearance in the later history of British Columbia, made up the staff of the chief factor at Stuart Lake—McDougall, Pam- brun and Yale. At Fraser Lake, McDonnell was in charge, with an assistant clerk. At McLeod Lake, Alexandria, and Babine, the other important posts of the district, Tod, McDougall, and Brown were in command. The district was already very prosperous. Beside furs, such commodities as birch bark, pitch, sturgeon oil, pemmican, Indian rice, buffalo robes, snowshoes, parchment for windows, dressed buffalo and moose skins and buffalo tongues entered into the trade of the country, and returned good profits to the company. There were more than the 99 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS usual dangers and hardships in the service of that isolated district, and the fragments of old journals that have survived are replete with tales of suffering. The question of supplies pressed unceasingly ; and the treachery of the natives constituted a ceaseless menace. Sickness and desertions among the men were on a corresponding scale. The record of Douglas's stay in New Caledonia is involved in much confusion and obscurity, some of which, at this date, is inexplicable. The leading incidents, however, stand out in greater or less relief; and it is possible to construct from them a narrative that is intelligible, if not at every point consecutive. He remained at first with Conolly at Fort St. James, to the temporary command of which he succeeded from time to time during the absences of his chief. Later he served as clerk at McLeod Lake to John Tod, famed as a controversialist and writer of letters, and, as he gave satisfaction, we find in due course the annual council of the company recommending that he "be engaged for a term of three years from the expiration of his contract, at £60 a year." But he soon returned to the more important duties of Stuart Lake. Of his activities here some interesting details are given in the MS. journal of the fort, which, as they shed light upon the general nature of the life in New Caledonia, may be quoted here. As was said above, the maintenance of a constant supply of provisions was the first care of 100 fe» THE SALMON FISHERY the early trading-posts. In this connection a fishery had been established at the mouth of a small stream on Stuart Lake, where, in 1806, the company had met the first Indians of the country. The catch, however, had been uncertain, and it was finally resolved to establish a second station on the headwaters of another river failing into the same reservoir. Douglas was placed in charge of the new fishery, and the journal1 contains the following references to his operations : Saturday, November 10th, 1827,—" Received from the [old] fishery fifty-nine whitefish, the produce of two nights. Clermont brought over the greater part of the nets To-morrow Mr. Douglas, with two fishermen, Bichon and Clermont, and two men to assist them will proceed to Yukogh (or Petit Lac) to establish the fishery there. This gentleman will not only superintend the fishery, but will also collect the fish which the Indians may have to dispose of immediately, for which purpose he is provided with leather [dressed skins] and other articles of trade." Sunday, 11th,—" Mr. Douglas, with five men, set out for the fishery of Yukogh. They are well provided with nets, having eight of small thread, three of willow, and four of Holland twine Most of the dogs are also sent to the fishery." Wednesday, 14th,—1 Vadeboncceur came from • x Quoted by Morice, History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia, pp. 127-9. 101 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the fishery and informed me that these two days back they had not taken a sufficiency for their consumption. I ordered them to come across tomorrow to prepare to go and join Mr. Douglas at the other fishery." From that date on we have frequent glimpses of the future governor hauling with dog sledges the fish he had taken at his station or had purchased from the Indians. The life was one of incessant toil and hardship even for the officers. To the end of his stay in New Caledonia, which was prolonged for six years, Douglas was busy with fish and furs, as the following entry in the journal made on the eve of his departure for Fort Vancouver shows: January 1st, 1830,—" .... Mr. Douglas also returned from his trip. In the way of furs he was more successful than had been expected, having collected, principally among the Kuzche Indians, about one hundred and ten pounds' weight of excellent furs, chiefly beaver and martin. But the fish trade has entirely disappointed us, only about one thousand and six hundred having been procured, part of which the dogs have brought to the fort by Mr. Douglas's men." For the rest, the story of Douglas's life in New Caledonia is involved in many discrepancies. In the main, it groups itself about two or three well defined incidents, which may be dealt with as nearly as possible in chronological order. 102 '" MARRIAGE It was probably soon after his arrival at Stuart Lake that the young officer took to wife Amelia Conolly, the daughter of the chief factor of New Caledonia. She was then in her sixteenth year, described as a shy, sweet and lovable girl, " modest as the wood violet," and having in addition to personal beauty, the blood of native heroes in her veins. A younger sister Julia, who also married an officer of the company, shared in the family attractiveness, as her portrait by an artist who accompanied the first expedition of Sir John Franklin shows. Beautiful and accomplished, the sisters were admired of all. The stay of the young wife in New Caledonia after her marriage was of short duration. Following her husband to Fort Vancouver, there happened one of those perilous chances to which women as well as men in that stern period were exposed, her boat upsetting in the dangerous passage of the Fraser. A description of the domestic life of the family in the later years of Fort Vancouver shows her ripened into a comely matron, her children about her knees, while Douglas on a Sabbath evening read to them from his Bible on the flower-decked porch of the officers' quarters. The eldest daughter of the family in after years married Dallas, who subsequently became governor of the company at Winnipeg. It may be added in passing that the status of Indian marriages had a personal bearing for Douglas from the fact that Conolly, his 103 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS father-in-law, on his retirement separated from his Indian wife and married again. Important legal proceedings followed, with the result that the first marriages in such cases were declared binding and the children legitimate. There has been some debate as to the exact share borne by Douglas in the extension of the company's operations in New Caledonia during the period of his service there. That he was prominent in the work is the evidence of several. Interest has centred in this connection in the erection of Fort Conolly, so named from the chief factor, and designed to facilitate from its situation on Bear Lake the trade with the Sekanais Indians. Douglas has been considered by many as the guiding spirit in that enterprise. On other evidence, however, he was operating in a region remote from Bear Lake in the year in which Fort Conolly was founded. The fact is not of first importance, knowing as we do the general activity of Douglas in exploration, and having the assurance from indubitable sources that for six years crowded with incident he lived the full life of the district. His mastery of the Indian languages is but one evidence of the energy with which he threw himself into the work ; and on his retirement from New Caledonia he had already laid the foundations of a knowledge of the Pacific slope that was later to be unrivalled. One of the many vicissitudes that befell him at this period, easily the most fateful in his early life, may be re- 104 INDIAN OUTRAGE ferred to in some detail, not for its intrinsic importance, but as illustrating the character of the man, the life of the place and the precarious nature of the evidence on which it is necessary to rely in this portion of the narrative. In 1823, Yale, who was in command of Fort George, had occasion to pay a visit to Stuart Lake. On his return the mangled bodies of his two assistants were found in an outhouse, at their side one of the company's axes with which they had been done to death by two Fraser Lake Indians. The motive of the deed is unrecorded. Yale was temporarily suspended on the ground of negligence, but on full investigation was reinstated. One of the murderers soon after paid the penalty of his crime. Several years elapsed, when in the summer of 1828, the survivor, Tzoelhnolle by name, hazarded a visit to Stuart Lake. Concerning the sequel we may note the versions of the more important writers who have considered the matter worthy of minute description. Bancroft,1 whose informant was John Tod of Fort McLeod,—an excellent authority, though over eighty miles distant at the time of the occurrence,— states that the occasion of the Indian's visit to Fort St. James was a native celebration, at a time when Douglas was in charge. The latter having been informed of the fact, immediately went in search of the murderer who took refuge under a pile of camp ^History of the North-West Const, Chapter XX. 105 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS equipage. Though an arrow-point stared him in the face, Douglas and young Conolly seized the wretch and killed him, in requital of which the former was taken prisoner soon after by two hundred savages with blackened faces and compelled to pay compensation. McLean1 relates the incident somewhat as follows: The Indian having visited Fort St. James when Douglas was in command, and the latter, though with a weak garrison, having executed "wild justice" on the murderer, the tribe, thoroughly incensed, determined to obtain reprisal through a stratagem. The old chief came alone to the fort and was admitted; the matter was discussed at length, and seemed in a fair way of being settled when a knock was heard at the gate. "It is my brother," said the chief, "come to hear what you have to say." The gate was opened, when the whole of the Nekasey tribe rushed in. The men of the fort were overpowered; and though Douglas seized a wall piece, he was speedily borne down. His life was in the utmost peril as he was held by the chief while thirty or forty Indians surrounded him brandishing knives and shouting "Shall we strike?" The chief hesitated, and the life of Douglas was saved only by the prompt courage of the wife of the interpreter of the fort who harangued the Indians and secured his release. 1 Notes of Twenty-five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory,— Vol. I. page 268. 106 AN EPISODE AT STUART LAKE Father Morice,1 who, in knowledge of the northern interior of British Columbia is without a peer, gives an entirely different account from the foregoing, quoting from native eye-witnesses. One of the murderers, according to Morice, had already paid the penalty of his crime, having been secretly slain by the company's servants who burned the remains in such a way as to suggest an accident, when the survivor visited Stuart Lake, Douglas being in charge. Hearing of his arrival, Douglas went in search, and Tzoelhnolle, though he hid under some skins, was quickly discovered. After an angry altercation, Douglas seized the murderer by the hair and fired at him with his blunderbuss, but the bullet flew wide; whereupon his men beat the life out of the Indian with hoes and clubs. The body was dragged out and left in the open; Morice adds that it was left to the dogs. Several days afterwards, the chief with the father of Tzoelhnolle arrived; Douglas was seized within the precincts of the fort; and the chiefs nephew pointing a dagger at his breast impatiently asked, "Shall I strike?" A brave attempt at rescue by the young wife of Douglas was overpowered. Thereupon the women of the fort threw tobacco, clothing and other goods into the crowd, securing the release of Douglas. These are only three of a great number of descriptions of an affair which has been given an alto- 1 History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia, page 138. 107 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS gether disproportionate importance.1 With reference to the last account, which is that of an unbending critic of the Hudson's Bay Company, some doubt may be permitted, notwithstanding the unrivalled knowledge of the author's, to a statement based on the traditions of local tribes and involving the ability of the native to recall at a date removed by half a century the circumstances of an incident concerning which he would have many temptations to fashion a version to his own credit. In any event, it would seem precipitate to base on this and other incidents in the early career of Douglas, the hypothesis that his removal to Fort Vancouver—the next great step in his career— came as a result of his inability to work in harmony with the Indians. Every reasonable estimate we have of the character of Douglas and of his value as an official is opposed to such a view. The change, as there is cause to believe, was in the way of preferment for success well earned in a difficult branch of the service, and for abilities already proved and now required in a larger field. It was carried out under the immediate direction of the governor, who, if any man, would be aware of the facts of the case, and would scarcely recommend for honour one who had jeopardized the company's interests in their most vital particular. We need hold no brief for either Douglas or the company in the *For variations of the story see Gray, History of Oregon^ p. 44 ; Hines, Oregon History, p. 392, etc., cited by Bancroft. 108 SIMPSON AT FORT ST. JAMES method in which justice was meted to the wretched native of the story ; but that the result was of far- reaching import to the career of the leading actor or to the relations of the company with the Indians, is perhaps beyond the ability of the historian at this date to demonstrate. Before the transfer of Douglas to Fort Vancouver, he had the opportunity of receiving in New Caledonia no less a personage than the governor of the company, Sir George Simpson, then on his tour of inspection of the posts in 1828. A somewhat detailed account of the ceremonies of the occasion lias survived. To impress the savage mind, it was thought advisable that the governor should make his entry into Fort St. James with even more than the usual amount of display. Within a mile of the lake the party halted, breakfasted, and decorated. The order of march was then arranged. The British ensign, fluttering to the breeze, was borne by a guide at the head of the procession. A band of buglers and bagpipers followed. Behind rode the governor, supported by the doctor of the party and a neighbouring chief factor, also mounted. Twenty men packing burdens next formed the line, while another officer with his wife and family brought up the rear. Arriving in view of the fort itself, the bugles sounded and the bagpipes struck up a famous march of the clans. Douglas replied with canon and musketry, advancing to receive his dis- 109 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS tinguished visitor. The first exchange of civilities ended, the line reformed, pipers and buglers entered the enclosure, and, marching along the gallery contiguous to the palisade, paraded in view of the wondering natives. A dozen years later when the governor was on his famous voyage around the world, Douglas had a second time the honour of welcoming him to a post of the company. The scene was at Fort Vancouver, and Douglas had by this time risen to all but the first rank in the most important station of the company west of the Rocky Mountains. The change to Fort Vancouver came in 1830. It marks the beginning of the career of Douglas as an officer of real importance to the company. McLoughlin's suggestion doubtless lay at the root of the transfer. A good accountant, possessed of administrative ability and capable of lightening the responsibility of the chief factor in minor affairs, was called for. Simpson himself had noted the capacity of Douglas during his visit to New Caledonia. The important nature of the post made the question of its officers a vital one. Ninety miles inland from the sea, on a green terrace sloping from the northern bank of the Columbia, Fort Vancouver, like a mediaeval castle, was at once a refuge in time of danger, an oasis of civilization in a surrounding desert of barbarism, and a capital from which its commander ruled the adjacent 110 McLoughlin at fort Vancouver territory. The fur country immediately tributary was wide and rich ; and the Indian tribes to develop its resources were numerous. But it was more than this. Built by McLoughlin in 1824-5 on the abandonment of Astoria, Fort Vancouver had the threefold advantage of a central location, a surrounding country adapted to agriculture, and accessibility to sea-going ships. The fort, accordingly, for nearly a quarter of a century, was the emporium not only of the company's vast interior trade, but of the traffic by sea both coastwise and with England and the Orient. It formed the counterpart of York on Hudson Bay, with an even wider range of operations and involving even greater responsibilities, on account of its distance from Great Britain. McLoughlin for this reason was invested with more than the usual powers of chief factor, having to act to a great extent on his own initiative. In many ways he was as supreme even as the governor at Fort Garry. For twenty years his rule was that of a Czar over the territory that stretched from Alaska to California, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Uncounted thousands of Indians—Cayuses, Walla Wallas, Okanagans, Nez Perces, Flatheads, Spokanes, Klickitats, Wascopams, Molallas, Callapooias, Tillamooks, Chinooks, Clatsops,—obeyed his behests and feared his displeasure. Over every waterway in that immense region he sent his Canadian voyageurs ; through hundreds of miles of forest he 111 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS dispatched his trappers and traders ; in and out of the fringing north-west islands, to Sitka itself, his schooners plied; throughout the San Joaquin and Tulare valleys, over Hie Shoshone country, on the shores of Salt Lake and in the Yellowstone itself, his brigades pitched their tents ; all alike bringing home rich tribute to the company, and restlessly seeking further and ever further regions to subdue. To share in this command, the first coadjutor of McLoughlin, Douglas, young as he was, had been chosen. It was an office great in its present powers and responsibilities; in the hands of Douglas, its future was to lead him to still higher place and honour. 112 CHAPTER IV FORT VANCOUVER THE moment of Douglas's arrival at Fort Vancouver was an important one in the history of the company. Up to 1830 little had been accomplished west of the Rocky Mountains beyond the slow and laborious establishment of a single pathway to the sea and the subjection of the country immediately tributary. New Caledonia had been given, for the time, its full measure of development; but the situation of McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver was still, to outward seeming, not unlike that of Fraser twenty years previously. The new fort had, however, what Fraser's posts had not, the illimitable promise which the command of both sea and land and the adaptability of the latter for agriculture held out. With the building of Fort Vancouver in 1824 and the occupation of the Columbia, the way was cleared for a policy of expansion on a scale unprecedented in the previous annals of the company. For this, after six years of preliminary effort, the time was now considered ripe; and Douglas was a part of the material which was placed in the hands of McLoughlin. It was the fortune, therefore, of Douglas to be identified from the first with the movement which brought the whole of the coast and the lower mainland of 113 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS British Columbia under the subjection of the white man. The full measure of the company's design at that period may be guessed from the part that was actually realized. McLoughlin was the directing spirit, though Douglas from the first entered fully into the confidence of his chief and assisted in the formation as well as the execution of his plans. That the company had in view a great trade north and south along the coast, with Russians and Mexicans as well as the native tribes; that it set no bounds to the regions it sought to dominate in the interior; that the Sandwich Islands were included in its commercial suzerainty; this much we know from history. That it cast its vision still further, to the Orient and the southern seas, is not improbable. Magnificent as was the dream of an ocean added to a continent for its sole trade, it was no more than the occasion seemed to warrant. Ocean and continent alike were a no-man's domain; not a rival in 1825-30 was in sight. But events moved too rapidly to leave so tremendous a development to private enterprise. The advent of the American colonist in Oregon, the establishment of the United States in California, and the definite partitionment of the north-west coast between Great Britain and the republic in the celebrated treaty of 1846, were destined to dissipate these hopes almost as soon as they were formed. The missionaries were in Oregon within a decade of McLoughlin him- 114 EXPANSION IN THE FUR TRADE self; and they were followed by a population that was to drive the fur trader forever from the land. For the forty years, however, that followed the advent of the white man west of the Rocky Mountains, the history of that territory is the history of the fur trade. Its earlier stages have been already outlined. In the present and in the following chapter will be noted the more important developments that ensued, with Fort Vancouver for centre, during the second quarter of the century, or until the division of Oregon between Great Britain and the United States, and the removal of the company's headquarters north of the 49th parallel. In discussing the period, it will be necessary first to trace the natural process of expansion, northward in the direction of Russian territory, southward towards California, as well as in the interior of New Caledonia and Oregon. Later, the movement contingent upon the settlement of Oregon and the determination of the international boundary, with the political consequences involved therein, will be briefly outlined. The first step looking to the extension of the company's influence northward was taken almost immediately after the establishment of Fort Vancouver. In 1824, an expedition sent out by McLoughlin made a careful examination of the shoreward territory lying between the Columbia and the Fraser; and its members were the first to 115 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS enter the latter river from the sea. Before further action was taken, however, the strengthening of communications with New Caledonia, which, as above noted, had already been established through Kamloops and Alexandria, required attention. This was accomplished by the founding of Fort Colville, in 1825-6, on the Upper Columbia, a post which at once attained importance as a depot for the surrounding territory and as final place of call for the brigades which, from this time forward, began to pass regularly eastward from the coast to Edmonton and Norway House. After this interlude, McLoughlin turned again to the north, and Fort Langley was erected on the Lower Fraser in 1827. Langley therefore represents the earliest occupation of the lower mainland of British Columbia. The schooner Cadboro which carried the crew and supplies for the new post was the first sea-going keel to ruffle the Fraser and the many bays of the neighbouring coast. Langley at once became important, the more so on account of its excellent salmon fishery. For a time, also, the trade of the coast northward was conducted through the Indians alone, with Langley as entrep6t. But competition pressed, that especially of the American traders; and in 1831 a bold resolve was taken. Fort Simpson was tremblingly erected at the mouth of the Naas, some hundreds of miles north of Langley. It arose in the midst of the most treacherous savages known on the coast; and its 116 OPERATIONS ON THE COAST occupation became in a peculiar degree a test of military endurance. It was the outpost for many years of the company's effort to monopolize the north-west trade. To occupy the territory between Fort Langley and Fort Simpson now became the concern of McLoughlin. In 1833, Finlayson, Manson and Anderson were sent north in the brig Dryad, John Dunn, known as the author of a history of Oregon, serving as their interpreter. At Millbank Sound, they were joined by McNeill in the Llama. (As throwing light upon conditions at this juncture, it may be explained that McNeill's first appearance on the coast had been as the agent of a Boston company with a shipload of gewgaws for the Indian trade. These completely outbid the company's staple commodities, with the result that McLoughlin, to rid himself of the nuisance, had bought the ship and her cargo outright and enlisted its captain in the company's service.) In the all but impenetrable forest that stretched to the water's edge, a space was cleared and a fort erected, closed in by the usual picket, one hundred and twenty yards square in this instance, with a height of eighteen feet. Such was Fort McLoughlin. From the first it was a scene of conflict with the Indians. Manson and Anderson were left in command, Tolmie succeeding Anderson in 1834 and Manson being replaced by Charles Ross in 1838. The first circulating library on the Pacific slope was founded by 117 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Tolmie and Manson for the benefit of these posts. In the same year as Fort McLoughlin, Fort Nis- qually was erected between Langley and Fort Vancouver, and in 1835 Fort Essington was built to serve as intermediate station between Forts Simpson and McLoughlin. With the completion of these operations, the way was prepared for the inevitable collision with Russia that soon followed. As early as 1825 the need of a partitionment of interests between Great Britain and Russia on the north-west coast had been fully appreciated, and had resulted in the signing of a convention which was destined to affect far distant and strangely altered times and which therefore is among the most important episodes in the period at present in review. Under its terms, the subjects of both governments were free to navigate the Pacific and to trade with the natives of any shore not already occupied by Europeans. The traders might land at the posts of their rivals for shelter or repairs, but for no other reason, unless by express permission. Prince of Wales Island was established as the southern limit of Russian territory, the island to belong wholly to Russia. On the mainland, the boundary, after following the channel of the Portland Canal to the 56th parallel, was to lie along the summits of the coast range of mountains which it should follow parallel to the shore as far as longitude 141°. Thence it should run due north to the Arctic Ocean. Where the summits of the mountains, 118 THE ALASKA BOUNDARY however, from the 56th parallel northward should be more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the dividing line, it was agreed, should curve with the curving of the shore at that distance. For ten years the British were granted the right to trade throughout the lisiere and to the port of Sitka in all save arms, ammunition, and spirits. To the streams running through the shore-strip to the ocean, the right was granted in perpetuity. Such was the beginning of the Alaska boundary question, a matter that was not finally laid to rest until 1903. The terms were dictated purely by the circumstances of the rival trading companies, the only value of the coast-strip to the Russians being that it excluded the British from the trade of the interior. Intercourse was held at that time by the Russians only with the Indians of the coast, the latter bartering with the inland tribes at the head of the mountains. Furs and furs alone were the cause of contention in 1825 ; the land, which in 1903 was the point at issue, was at that time regarded as worthless. The navigable rivers, it will have been noted, were left as an avenue by which the British traders might pierce the Russian cordon to the interior. In 1834, the first attempt to utilize this concession was made. The most considerable river crossing the strip of land below the 141st degree was the Stikien. To enter it, traverse the Russian zone, and establish a post in the hinterland, was the object of an expedition sent north 119 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS under Ogden and Anderson in the year mentioned. The party was well equipped, as befitted one whose mission was the founding of a station able to support itself a thousand miles from any base of supplies, and to fight both savages and rivals. But it had apparently reckoned without its host. At the mouth of the Stikien a Russian blockhouse was encountered, supported by a corvette and two gunboats to forbid the entrance to the river. The Russians well appreciated the danger to their trade that lurked in the designs of the British ; and the alleged sale of firearms and spirits to the natives was now used by Baron Wrangel, the Russian governor at Sitka, as the grounds for a request to the imperial government to rescind the clause of the treaty which gave the British access to the river. Without awaiting a reply, Wrangel had fortified the Stikien as soon as news of the projected move of the Hudson's Bay Company reached Sitka. The coast Indians, jealous of their commerce with the interior tribes, added their refusal to that of the Russian governor. Heated negotiations were conducted on the spot between the rivals; but after a delay of a few days the company's ship was put about and returned to Fort Vancouver, armed with a lengthy protest and bill of losses for reference to the home government. On the way back, that the expedition might not be wholly fruitless, Fort Simpson was removed some forty miles to the south. The negotiations that followed between Russia and Great Britain took shape finally in a com- 120 DOUGLAS AT FORT VANCOUVER mission which met in London. As a result, the shore-strip reservation was leased to the Hudson's Bay Company by Russia at an annual rental of two thousand land-otter skins. The Stikien post was handed over ; and permission was given to erect another post still further northward on the Taku. It was agreed also that the British should supply the Russians at Sitka with provisions, which the inclemency of northern latitudes prevented the Russians from raising for themselves. So satisfactory in the issue did this arrangement prove that it was three times renewed, while in addition to Fort Taku on the coast, two posts, Mumford and Glen- ora, were erected on the Upper Stikien, where they remained until the advent of the gold-seeker drove the game from the district. Douglas played a prominent part in directing the events which ended as above described. Soon after his arrival on the coast he had revised and greatly improved the system of accounting by which the several posts of the department made annual returns to Fort Vancouver. At least once he had been in charge of the York Factory express, a difficult and dangerous service, the route lying by way of Walla Walla, Colville, and the Athabaska Pass, to Edmonton, thence to Hudson Bay and return. This was in 1835, the party consisting of twenty- nine Canadians in three boats, eight months being consumed in the journey. It was Douglas, also, who, in 1840, was in command of the party which 121 II SIR JAMES DOUGLAS raised the British flag above Fort Stikien. The mission was of considerable importance. Rae, Fin- layson and the son of McLoughlin, with fifty men, made up the force. By way of Nisqually and Langley, the latter being found in ruins from an Indian attack, and passing forts McLoughlin and Simpson, they steamed in the Beaver to the headquarters of the company in the leased territory, where the formal act of transfer was completed. A brave rescue by Douglas of a member of his crew who had been swept away while fording the icy waters of the Nisqually River was recorded on this journey. Rae, with eighteen men, was left at Stikien, and Douglas with the rest passed on to Sitka. Ten days were spent with Etholm in the final ratification of the agreement. Some words were dropped as to the purchase of Ross in California, but nothing definite resulted. On the return from Sitka, Fort Durham, commonly known as Taku, was erected. In that desolate spot of almost constant rain and snow, and among some of the wildest natives of the coast, it had a life of only three years. Douglas was again in charge of the party which dismantled the post. Fort McLoughlin on Mill- bank Sound was at the same time moved to the head of Vancouver Island and renamed Fort Rupert. Indian turbulence, here as in no other part of the company's dominions, constantly menaced its affairs. McLoughlin the younger, who had followed Rae at Fort Stikien, was shot in 1842, per- 122 Si ROBERT CAMPBELL haps the most signal victim of the animosity in the teeth of which the company drove its northern trade. With the movement upon Russian trade by way of the sea, it had been decided to attack from the land as well; and the result was a series of expeditions in the northern interior of British Columbia that recall the days of Mackenzie and Fraser. With a courage not less conspicuous, the company pushed its way into the region of the Upper Liard and Yukon which the white man had never before seen. The incident belongs in part to the development of the Mackenzie River Department, and in part to later history, though it may fitly be mentioned here. On the Liard, the most wild and dangerous of all the great eastern streams that dash down from the Rocky Mountains, the earliest post to be established within the confines of British Columbia was the fort which took its name from the river itself. Fort Nelson on the eastern branch, was built about the same period, or shortly after the beginning of the century. Twenty years later, Fort Liard was pillaged by the Indians and its people murdered. Meanwhile Fort Halkett had been founded on a higher branch, shortly after the amalgamation of the rival companies. In 1834, the Upper Liard was ascended by McLeod to its southern source in Dease Lake. It was not, however, until 1838 that a post was built in this remote country by a Scotsman named Robert Campbell, the most 123 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS distinguished man which the place and period produced, and the last of the great explorers which the fur trade gave to the western continent. Ordered to the Mackenzie in 1834, Campbell, after his operations at Dease Lake, crossed to the Pacific by the Stikien. Here he was taken prisoner by the Indians. On his escape, after terrible hardships, Fort Dease was burned to the ground. But it was not until 1840 that Campbell, under orders from Sir George Simpson, undertook the journey that was to make him famous. This was the ascent of the northern branch of the Liard through the great gorge that had previously barred all hope of access to its source, Lake Frances. After a desperate struggle, Campbell surmounted the barrier, and on Lake Finlayson, a tributary reservoir, saw the waters divide, part to flow into the Pacific, part to begin the long journey to the Arctic. Beyond the height of land he sighted the cliffs of the Pelly. After descending this river a few miles he turned back. The honour of naming it from himself he refused. In the following year, with a post on Lake Frances and another on Pelly Banks as a basis, he again set forth, but was again compelled, this time by hostile natives, to return, after reaching the point where the junction of the Lewis and the Pelly forms the great river of Alaska. It was not until eight years later that Campbell's efforts were crowned with success. On that occasion, after erecting Fort Selkirk at the mouth of the Lewis, 124 CALIFORNIA and tracing the latter to its source, he descended the Yukon several hundred miles to the junction of the Porcupine, where Fort Yukon, the most remote of the company's posts, lying one hundred and fifty miles within the Alaska boundary and on the Arctic Circle, had been built some four years earlier by the trader Bell. Here Campbell united his own discoveries with those made by way of the lower and less difficult branches of the Mackenzie. Ascending the Porcupine and crossing to the Peel, he arrived by way of the Mackenzie at his original point of departure, Fort Simpson on the Liard. He had traversed in that great circle over three thousand miles of river and mountain; he had mapped a huge region which before had been wholly unknown; and he had given a lasting impetus to the trade inland in the direction of the Russian competitor; all with a forgetfulness of self that was only equalled by the splendid courage and endurance which the achievement demanded. In California, the endeavour of the company to secure a foothold, while Fort Vancouver remained the entrep6t of the department, was extended over sixteen years. The descendants of the Spaniards, who now held the country after throwing off the yoke of Spain, had neither the enterprise to establish trade nor the inclination to foster it by government. Fish and furs, in small quantities only, found an outlet through Mexico. Nevertheless, 125 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the efforts of Russia, England, and the United States, to establish trading-posts in the south, met with fierce opposition. The first attempt of the Hudson's Bay Company to invade California was before 1830, the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin having at an early date attracted the attention of McLoughlin. A party sent to the assistance of the American trader Jedidiah Smith, who, on crossing from Salt Lake in 1827-8, had been roughly handled by the Indians and had lost a convoy of furs, penetrated as far as the Umpqua. A second expedition, under Ogden, reached the Sacramento River, and in 1835 the company established a post at the junction of the Sacramento and Jesus Maria. A few years served to exhaust the furs of these outlying districts, and, with the desire to reach still further southward, a collision with Mexico became inevitable. At this contingency, Douglas was sent in charge of a party to treat with the Mexican governor. Sailing from Fort Vancouver, December 3rd, 1840, on the ship Columbia, with a crew of thirty-six and a cargo of miscellaneous goods, he cast anchor at Monterey on New Year's Day, 1841. The design of the voyage was largely political, but the crew had been increased by stockmen who were to drive northward a supply of cattle. The negotiations with the governor lasted until January 19th. Douglas undertook to check the operations of the company in the Tulare and outlying valleys, and in return 126 SAN FRANCISCO obtained a temporary relaxation of the law which confined the coastwise trade to Mexican bottoms, together with the important right for the company to trade in California by express sanction of the government. Fifty cents, it was agreed, should be paid by the company for each beaver skin taken. San Francisco was immediately visited with a view to an establishment, not without friction with rival traders; and Douglas was back in Fort Vancouver by the following May. Rae, the son-in-law of McLoughlin, was recalled from the Stikien and appointed to the new post, which was situated on Yerba Buena Cove, in the Bay of San Francisco. Simpson, then on his famous voyage around the world, and McLoughlin as chief factor, visited the post soon after. For two years the record of the company's transactions was the history of San Francisco, and its servants made up almost the entire population. With the interior a steady trade in supplies sprang up. But the scale of profits from the first was below the expectation of the company. Rae fell ill, and in 1845 committed suicide. Forbes took over the control; but the governor had already decided, against the judgment of McLoughlin, to abandon the post. The end came in 1846, when the company sold the establishment at Yerba Buena and retired forever from San Francisco Bay. These vigorous efforts of the company in the outlying regions of the department were accompanied 127 Jj SIR JAMES DOUGLAS by developments in the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Vancouver which were of even greater importance. The agreement with the Russians relative to the supplying of provisions had been fraught with far-reaching consequences. From the first, McLoughlin, in spite of prejudice to the contrary, had recognized the agricultural possibilities of Oregon. The mild and equable climate and the depth and richness of the soil tempted a diversity and luxuriance of growth that invited the most unwilling to husbandry. In the open spaces about Fort Vancouver axe and plough were set to work, and corn and live-stock reared. Sheep were brought from California, hogs from the Sandwich Islands, and cattle from Ross. Soon a flour mill worked by oxen was set up. Grist and sawmiHs followed on the Willamette. Horse breeding for the brigades became extensive. By 1835, some thirty-five hundred feet of lumber were being sawn daily; while the yield of grain was annually several thousands of bushels, and the number of animals constantly on hand several hundreds. By these activities the company was saved the expense of bringing supplies through the mountains or around Cape Horn. The growing of grain was still a mere auxiliary to the trade in peltries, and while it remained so the inherent incompatibility of the two was not apparent. In a land of abundance, however, the supply soon exceeded the local demand. Flour and lumber from the Columbia began to seek a market in the Pacific 128 THE PUGET SOUND COMPANY Islands. Salmon was shipped to Boston and London. With the Russian treaty, and the stimulus which it immediately gave to farming on the Columbia, this new phase was accentuated. The first intimation had been given, to those who could understand, of the final destiny of the region. Fur- trading and settled industry cannot live together. The company knew this full well. But, as it could not alter the decree of nature, its primary concern in the situation was one of organization merely— the keeping of the two divisions of its activity separate, now that the industrial branch gave promise of attaining large proportions. To have charge of the important commercial and agricultural interests of the company, a separate body was deemed necessary. The formation of a cattle association by some settlers on the Willamette pointed the way ; and in 1838-9, McLoughlin obtained the sanction of the directors to the organization of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. The new undertaking was brought into being under the immediate auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company, which furnished nearly all the original shareholders. It was officered from the staff of the parent body; and it was expressly forbidden to deal in furs. On the other hand the Hudson's Bay Company handed over all its cattle, sheep, horses and farming implements to it and renounced husbandry forever in Oregon. The rich and level region which lay about Nisqually and between Puget Sound and 129 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the headwaters of the Cowlitz, a branch of the Columbia which joins the latter about fifty miles from the ocean, offered a favourable field for the rearing of flocks and herds and the production of wool, hides and tallow. Farms were also opened on the Willamette. McLoughlin was appointed the first manager; skilled farmers and shepherds were brought from Canada and England ; and the company was finally inaugurated in 1840, with a capital of £200,000 in £100 shares. Of this capital, however, no more than £16,160 were found to have been paid up at the time the company's affairs were finally settled. It would seem that the enterprise suffere3 almost from the start from a variety of opposing circumstances. Into the history of its chequered career it is unnecessary here to enter, lying as the period does some years in advance of the time at present under discussion. The adoption of the 49th parallel as the international boundary, in 1846, under circumstances to be explained further on, was a blow from which the company never attempted to recover. Its men deserted for the free lands of the homesteader; the natives destroyed its stock ; while the technical differences between " possessions " and " possessory rights " under the boundary treaty, were a source of perpetual dispute between the companies and the United States. An offer was finally made to sell all rights and titles to the United States for $1,000,000. This was not accepted, and the friction continued. 130 OPERATIONS OF THE COMPANY Again, in 1860, it was intimated, through the British ambassador at Washington, that the sum of $500,000 would be accepted by Great Britain on behalf of the companies, and would release the United States from all engagements under the treaty. The company, however, maintained its position until the year 1867, hoping that by continuing in business, though at a loss, it would make good its case against the United States. In the year mentioned, a commission was appointed by which the various claims were at last determined. Those of the Hudson's Bay Company were settled for $450,000 ; those of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, for $200,000. It was discovered by the commission that the latter body was indebted to the parent company in the sum of £25,000, and that except at intervals it had not paid a profit to the shareholders. The highest dividend declared was ten per cent., and this was continued for five years only, 1848-53. The last dividend paid was in 1854; it amounted to five per cent. The Hudson's Bay Company had an interest as purchaser in one thousand three hundred and eighty-six shares issued at par. In 1853, the company claimed one hundred and sixty-seven thousand acres at Nisqually, eighty thousand acres of which were prairie land. At Cowlitz, it claimed three thousand six hundred acres. In 1856, according to Tolmie, it had seven hundred and forty acres fenced at Nisqually. Of its operations on Vancouver Island there will be mention later. 131 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS McLoughlin, the first manager of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, was succeeded on his retirement by Douglas, who also severed his connection with the company in the year 1859, upon his acceptance of the governorship of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. One incident in connection with the agricultural operations of the company may be noted in passing. In 1829, when the soil about Fort Vancouver was first upturned, a fearful epidemic of fever and ague broke out. The whites suffered severely, but the Indians fell by thousands. Typhoid, whooping- cough and measles soon after made their first appearance. In 1833 a hospital which had been erected on the Columbia had from two to three hundred cases as its usual number. Over many stirring events that had their centre in Fort Vancouver, during the period in which it dominated the life of the coast, this summary must pass in silence. The narration might be made to include several daring expeditions into forest and wilderness, such, for example, as that which Work led in 1834 far into the wilds of Oregon, past the headwaters of the Willamette, to the buffalo country of the Missouri; or that of Ermatinger in 1841 to the Sacramento ; or that which founded in 1832 Fort Umpqua on the route between Fort Vancouver and San Francisco Bay,—almost the only post attempted by the company for purposes of general 132 JEDIDIAH SMITH trade south of the Columbia. Much space, too, might be given to the internal development of the company, and to the life that sprang up on the Columbia, which under McLoughlin was perhaps more striking than that in any other part of the company's domain. But the tree had no sooner achieved vigorous growth than it withered before the changed conditions which came with the advent of the agriculturist from the United States. To the important series of events that ended in the permanent establishment of the United States in Oregon, involving the settlement of the boundary between British and American territory, the extinction of the fur trade between the Columbia and the 49th parallel, and the removal of the company's headquarters from Fort Vancouver to Victoria, the rest of this chapter will be devoted. As before, Douglas was the close spectator, if not the actual director, of almost every move that was taken, having risen to the rank of chief trader in 1832 and of chief factor in 1840, and becoming in later years the forefront of the opposition offered by the English company to what it soon had to acknowledge was the decree of fate. Prior to 1830, the first to cross the Rockies from the United States to Oregon, since the days of the Astorians, was Jedidiah Smith, who, with a band of fellow trappers, entered the Snake River country in 1825. Since the War of 1812, it should be explained, Astoria had been in the possession of 133 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the United States under an arrangement with Great Britain by which the country from the Mexican frontier for an indeterminate distance northward was held in joint sovereignty. More concerning this arrangement will appear later on. From that time forward the possibility of the settlement of Oregon by agriculturists had been debated from time to time in congress ; but the awful perils of the journey overland and the conflicting information as to the value of the country itself led to no active result. Meanwhile, as we know, McLoughlin had installed the rule of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver and had taken virtual possession of the territory north and south. Smith was a lieutenant of the Rocky Mountain Fur* Company, which the enterprise of the trader Ashley had made famous in the great interior of the continent, and which was the first to re-establish commercial communications between the United States and the territories west of the Rocky Mountains. Since the dissolution of the Pacific Fur Company the trade of the Upper Mississippi and the Missouri had been carried on by the North American Fur Company, at the head of which Astor remained, while in 1822 the Columbia Fur Company was formed, for operation in the same field, from recruits from the North- West Company who were dissatisfied with the terms of the amalgamation of 1821. Smith, after crossing twice to the Pacific and ranging throughout Northern California, was killed by Indians in 134 fe AMERICAN TRADERS 1829, but not before he had led the first train of waggons from the east to the base of the Rocky Mountains. Sporadic expeditions followed under the command of Pilcher of the North American Company, Pattie of a Missouri concern, and others to whom these operations acted as a spur ; but until Bonneville and Wyeth came, direct collision with the Hudson's Bay Company was avoided. Smith in fact, as has been noted, owed his fortune, almost his life, on one occasion, to the English company, and gratitude may have found a place even in the breasts of warring fur traders. Bonneville, a Frenchman by birth and a captain of the United States army, having obtained in 1831 a furlough of two years, led a band of one hundred men and twenty waggons from the Missouri to the Columbia, where he spent two years in unsuccessful contention with rival enterprises, and returned having lost all. The expeditions of Wyeth of Massachusetts, made about the same time as that of Bonneville, were conceived in more serious vein, but met with scarcely greater success. Two posts were founded but were almost immediately driven out by the competition of the Hudson's Bay Company. Kelly, a Boston schoolteacher and an enthusiast in religion and politics, had the merit of attracting attention to Oregon by an extravagant scheme of colonization, in attempting to realize which he passed through extreme hardships in California and was rescued in the end from his suffering by the Hudson's Bay 135 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Company, against which, however, he continued to entertain to the last an implacable hatred. Unsettled in mind as he was, Kelly was nevertheless the first to declare the feasibility of overland emigration from the United States to the Pacific, and, in writings poured forth for over a quarter of a century, to induce ultimately some trial of the undertaking which was to prove the true solution of the country's future. By sea, during the year 1829, the ships Convoy and Owyhee, both of Boston, attempted to open trade with the natives of the Columbia. After a year's stay on the coast, the vessels took their departure and were seen in these waters no more. The Owyhee was reputed to have brought the first peach trees planted in Oregon and to have carried thence the first Columbia salmon to reach the Boston markets. But the most potent factor in the permanent settlement of Oregon was the coming of the missionaries. The period was the third decade of the century. The movement had its origin in an incident, striking as it was touching. About the time of Wyeth's first expedition, there had appeared at St. Louis five Indians of the Nez Perces tribe who, having heard of the white man's God and His book, had come to ask that men be sent to teach their people concerning them. The story of their quest found its way into the press and was re-echoed throughout the churches of the land. To 136 Bi THE MISSIONARIES IN OREGON one Jason Lee, a Methodist preacher, the call came as from Macedonia of old. With his nephew Daniel Lee and three lay brethren, he joined the second expedition of Wyeth which was at the moment embarking on its perilous march. In July 1834, Lee preached his first sermon in Oregon. With McLoughlin's aid, he planted his first mission on the Willamette, where a few retired servants of the company had already, by permission, established themselves and were employed chiefly in herding cattle. The mission soon became the nucleus of a permanent colony drawing recruits continuously from beyond the mountains. It was the first settlement of United States citizens on the Columbia having other than a commercial object in view. Before another year had elapsed, Lee was followed by the Presbyterian missionaries Parker and Whitman, the latter being joined by his wife. Spaulding and Gray came in 1836. The tribes of the Upper Columbia were now evangelized, Whitman settling in the valley of the Walla Walla and Spaulding in the Nez Perce's country, and still further knowledge of the country was distributed in the Eastern States. Whitman, especially, from the moment of his arrival in Oregon, was untiring in his agitation for the inclusion of the country in the United States territory; and his establishment among the Cayuses soon formed a gateway through the mountains for the straggling lines of the settlers, which from this time forward, as a result largely of his efforts, began to 137 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS flow in ever-increasing numbers from the east to the Columbia. Whitman's famous ride from Oregon to Washington over the snow, in 1843, that he might superintend the immigration of the following year, is the most stirring deed of the whole movement. He returned with a thousand people. Schools for the education of the natives were opened ; and in 1839 a printing press was set up at Walla Walla on which were struck off the first sheets ever printed on the Pacific slope of America north of Mexico. The Jesuit missionaries, who came in 1838 from Canada, penetrated throughout the region, but had little effect on immigration. To notice in detail the various steps by which the intermittent bands of settlers attracted by the missionaries to Oregon swelled into a great national movement ending in the occupation of the country by the United States, would be beyond the scope of the present chapter. Disconnected and unimportant at first, the different strands were in a measure gathered into a self-conscious whole in 1837, with the formation in the United States of the first societies for the promotion of emigration to Oregon. From that time forward the inflow was continuous, gathering volume with time. Perhaps no better view of the varied nature of the movement and of the manner in which its different constituents were intermingled, is obtainable than that presented by the following extracts from a document prepared by McLoughlin himself: 138 THE SETTLEMENT OF OREGON "This year," he writes, with reference to 1836, " the people in the Willamette formed a party and went by sea with Mr. Slacum to California for cattle, and returned in 1837 with two hundred and fifty head. In 1836, the Rev. Mr. Leslie and family, accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Perkins, another single man, and a single woman, came by sea to reinforce the Methodist Mission. In 1837 a bachelor and five single women also came by sea to reinforce the Methodist Mission; and three Presbyterian ministers came across land with their families, while their supplies came by sea. Two of these missionaries settled in the vicinity of Colville, the other in the Nez Percys country. In 1838, two Roman Catholic missionaries came from Canada. This year the Rev. Mr. Griffin of the Presbyterian Church, with his wife, came across land from the States by way of the Snake country. There came with him also a layman of the name of Munger, and his wife .... In 1839 a party left the state of Illinois, headed by Mr. Farnham, with the intention of exploring the country and reporting to their countrymen who had sent them. Four only reached this place. Three remained, Mr. Farnham returning to the States by sea and publishing an account of his travels. Messrs. Geiger and Johnson came this year, sent, as they said, by people in the States to examine the country and report. Johnson left by sea and never returned. Geiger went as far as California and returned here by land .... In 1840, 189 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS m the Rev. Mr. Clark of the Presbyterian Church with his wife, and two laymen with their wives, came across land on the self-supporting system, but, as their predecessors, they failed, and are now settled on the Willamette. In 1840, the Rev. Mr. Jason Lee, who had gone in 1838 across land to the United States, returned by sea in the Lausanne, Capt. Spaulding, with a reinforcement of fifty-two persons, ministers and laymen, women and children, for the Methodist Mission, and a large supply of goods with which the Methodist Mission opened a sale shop. In 1841, the American exploring squadron, under Captain Wilkes, surveyed the Columbia River from the entrance to the Cascades, and sent a party across land from Puget Sound to Colville and Walla Walla, and another from Vancouver to California. At the same time the Thomas Perkins, Captain Varney, of Boston, entered the Columbia River for the purpose of trade. . . . " In the spring, the Rev. Father De Smet of the Society of Jesus came to Vancouver from the Flat Head country where the year before he had established a mission from St. Louis. He came for supplies, with which he returned to his mission. In August, the Rev. Messrs. Langlois and Bolduc came by sea. In the month of September, one hundred and thirty-^even men, women, and children arrived from the States. They came with their waggons to Fort Hall, and thence packed their 140 ARRIVALS IN OREGON effects on horses and drove their cattle. ... In the fall, eight hundred and seventy-five men, women, and children came from the States by the same route as last year, bringing one thousand three hundred head of cattle. These came to The Dalles, on the Columbia River, with their waggons, drove their cattle over the Cascades by the same route as those of last year to the Willamette, and when the road was blocked by snow proceeded along the north bank of the Columbia to Vancouver, where they crossed the river to the Willamette, bringing down their wives, children, and property, on rafts, in canoes which they hired from the Indians, and in boats belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, lent them by me. The Rev. Father Deros [Demers] of the Society of Jesus, came this year with two other fathers of the same society and three laymen and established a mission in the Colville district. Lieutenant Fremont, of the United States service, came with a party to examine the country. After purchasing supplies from the Hudson's Bay Company, he rejoined his party at The Dalles, and proceeded across land to California. In 1844, the immigrants amounted to one thousand four hundred and seventy- five men, women and children. They came by the same route and were assisted by me with the loan of boats, as their predecessors of last year. The Belgian brig, Indefatigable, also anchored there. She was the only vessel that 141 I1 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS hitherto came under that flag, and brought the Rev. Father De Smet, with four fathers of the Society of Jesus, and five Belgian nuns of the Society of Sisters of Our Lady. The fathers came to reinforce their mission in the interior in the Flat Head country and to establish others, and the nuns to build a convent and open a school for young females in the Willamette." Data for ascertaining the numbers that came across the plains to Oregon, from the year 1840 until the fixing of the international boundary, are incomplete and unsatisfactory. It has been estimated that at the close of 1841 there were in the neighbourhood of four hundred citizens of the United States in Oregon. For 1842, the estimates range, on good authority, from one hundred and five to one hundred and thirty-seven immigrants; while in the following year not less than eight hundred and seventy-five to one thousand came into the country. The number fell to seven hundred in 1844, but rose to three thousand in 1845, during the period that immediately preceded the final settlement of the controversy between Great Britain and the United States concerning the boundary. In 1846, the movement again fell off, this time to about one thousand three hundred and fifty. The climax of the movement, in a political sense, came in 1844. From the time of the missionaries, the influx had taken on the characteristics of a 142 THE GOVERNMENT OF OREGON great national propaganda for the annexation of Oregon to the United States. The settler conveyed a clearer title to the soil than the fur trader; the settler, therefore, under the existing conditions was a patriot as well. Of the intricacies of the debate between Great Britain and the United States concerning the division of Oregon, some review will be given later; it is sufficient here to advert to the political significance of the immigration movement and to the fact that this significance was understood by every one who took part in it. By 1844, enough strength had been gathered for a definite declaration of policy on the spot. Political organization of some sort had, moreover, become expedient. A provisional government was accordingly erected on the Willamette, representative entirely of the American element—for the British held aloof— and established on the understanding that it would exist only until the United States extended its jurisdiction to the country. It had an executive of three and a legislature of eight. It passed several laws; but the bowie knife and pistol remained the most effective engines in bringing delinquents to justice. For two years the unique experiment was continued, until the treaty of 1846 erected Oregon into a territory of the American union. A word may be added with regard to the course observed by the Hudson's Bay Company towards the settlers from the United States. It was indeed a difficult situation; on the one hand, suffering men 143 ii SIR JAMES DOUGLAS and women, the terrible passage of the plains having left nearly all the earlier settlers in a state of destitution and defencelessness; on the other, the loss of the country to the trade. Yet there can be no doubt that to missionaries and immigrants alike the attitude of the company was one of kindness and hospitality. How much of this was due to McLoughlin is a question hard to answer. The significance of the influx was never misunderstood; and if upon McLoughlin the*, bitterness of the losing battle fell, the fact remains that when Douglas succeeded to his place no change in policy followed. Perhaps it was then too late; though in any event the movement was irresistible from the first. To rival traders, of course, no quarter was given; they were fought with every weapon which the wealth and long experience of the company had placed in its hand, and with unvarying success. Ingratitude on the part of those who had received its bounty is hard to account for. Yet it is a fact that the ill-will which McLoughlin incurred from the company for befriending the settlers, excused as it might be by the heavy losses sustained through the policy which he had adopted, was more than equalled by the hatred with which he was pursued by some of those whom he had rescued from death in its most terrible forms, whom he had fed, clothed, and supplied with the means of obtaining a livelihood, and for whom he risked his own future 144 —1 FORT VANCOUVER ABANDONED with the company. Political passion alone can account for this perversion. A year before the Oregon boundary had been finally determined, McLoughlin, the picturesque and admirable, the "great white eagle" of the Pacific slope, had been forced from his command; and Douglas, more rigid in his obedience, though no more able, as it proved, to stem the tide, ruled in his stead. Such, in outline, was the nature of the movement which, by peopling the country south of the Columbia with a race that tilled the soil, drove out the hunter and the trapper, its discoverer and first occupant. In this way was solved the vexed problem of sovereignty in Oregon. Thenceforward the vast hiatus between the Alleghanies and the Rockies was bridged by the tie of a common nationality at either end; and the foot of the republic was planted firmly once and for all on the shores of the Pacific. With the year 1846, the British frontier was moved back to the 49th parallel, except for the portion of Vancouver Island which lay below that fine and for the possessory rights which the Hudson's Bay Company and others retained in the Columbia valley, Britain having maintained throughout that the Columbia formed the proper boundary between the countries. Fort Vancouver remained until 1849 as a post of the company; but the glory had departed. Coming events had cast their shadow before; and the removal of the boundary did not find the company unprepared. Three M5 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS years before the final settlement, a fort had been established within the shelter of the new lines, to inherit the prestige of Vancouver as the company's emporium on the pacific, and to form the nucleus of the new political and social life that was to spring up with the definite determination of the national frontier. This was Victoria on Vancouver Island, founded by James Douglas in 1843. The event and its immediate results were of such importance, both to the fur trade and the country, as to merit a chapter to themselves. Before approaching this part of the subject, however, it will be of interest to describe more fully that famous controversy between Great Britain and the United States concerning the Oregon boundary, some further reference to which is necessary in immediate connection with the foregoing, and of which the establishment of Victoria, though forestalling it in point of time, was largely in the nature of a result. 146 .'."'■, JLm^ CHAPTER V THE OREGON BOUNDARY THE fundamental elements of the memorable dispute between Great Britain and the United States concerning the Oregon boundary have been set forth incidentally in previous chapters. It will be well, however, before discussing the negotiations which brought the contest to an end, to recall in rapid review the more crucial of these early events, the significance of which bulked large in the arguments of later times and combined with much that was new to determine the ultimate destiny of the Pacific coast. It has been described how, in the first half of the sixteenth century, Spain alone of the European nations—partly by virtue of the Papal bull, partly in overweening power—followed a career of conquest in the New World. How she was brought in due course to the Pacific, and how, after the plunder of Mexico and Peru, her sailors buffeted their way along the coast to the 50th parallel of latitude, was also dealt with. If such discoveries conveyed a title to the soil, Spain's sole disturber in these early days was the Englishman Francis Drake, whose descent upon New Albion was the less vexatious because, like the Spaniards themselves, he was gone almost as soon as he had come. As a matter of fact, 147 .iHi il SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the coast above the 42nd parallel was still to all intents an undiscovered country when, more than a hundred and sixty years after Drake and Viscaino, the expeditions of Perez, Heceta and Quadra first gave to Spain what might be called a title to the shore south of the 58th parallel. Cook's voyage, the discoveries of the Russians, and the rise of the British trade in sea-otter, have been referred to at some length in the foregoing. The result of the advent of Great Britain in these waters was the collision at Nootka, the final settlement of which pricked forever the bubble of Spain's pretensions to exclusive ownership in the Pacific, the coast being thrown open to the vessels of both nations for trade, navigation and settlement, while each was given the right of access to the stations of the other. Vancouver's careful survey, the investigations of Quimper, and the discovery of the Columbia by Gray followed, Gray's exploit becoming in later years the strongest argument with which the United States contested her claim to Oregon. Soon after, the epoch-making expedition of Mackenzie overland opened the way to the first permanent settlement west of the Rocky Mountains. Of the part played by American navigators, who for a decade after 1800 monopolized the trade of the coast, and the momentous series of incidents that grouped themselves about the Louisiana purchase, including the expedition of Lewis and Clark and the founding of Astoria, full 148 TRANSFER OF ASTORIA mention has already been made. With this review by way of brief reminder, the negotiations that led to the first formal understanding between Great Britain and the United States—the powers who in the process of time inherited the tangled skein of claim and counter-claim to Oregon—may be outlined from the beginning. Upon the close of the War of 1812, it had been agreed1 between Great Britain and the United States that territory taken by either nation in the course of the hostilities should be restored to its original owner. No allusion was made to the country west of the Rocky Mountains, nor were boundaries anywhere defined. Astoria, which had been purchased in 1813 by the North-West Company from its founders, remained in the possession of the British traders. There had been features, however, in connection with the transfer of that famous post, which imparted to the transaction a significance out of the ordinary. It will be remembered that the sale was made by agents who, though employees of the American company, were British by birth and sentiment; that it took place in the expectation of the arrival of an overpowering British force; and that, almost immediately upon the consummation of the purchase, the British sloop of war Raccoon took possession of the post, over which the British flag was raised, the name being at the same time changed to Fort George. How much or how little *By the Treaty of Ghent, December 24th, 1814. 149 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS of the contiguous territory attached to the fort was always an open question. The bearing of these incidents was not lost sight of in the United States. No definite action was taken, however, until 1817, when the right to be reinstated on a national basis at Astoria was formally put forward, on the ground that the circumstances attending the transfer of 1813 amounted virtually to belligerent capture, and I that the restoration of the fort was therefore included in the treaty which closed the war. After a brief demurrer, the claim was admitted by Lord Castlereagh for England,—completely and unconditionally, it was afterwards urged by the United States, though probably in the first instance with the idea merely of acknowledging the right of the United States to be regarded as the party in possession while discussion of the title to the adjoining territory was in progress. It should be explained that by the prolonged inactivity of Spain, the absorption of Russia in her northern trade, and the elimination of France by the purchase of Louisiana, the United States had by this time divided with Great Britain the leading interest in the region. The American flag was accordingly raised again over the site of Astoria, though the English company remained in possession for several years longer. Herein, it may be said, was the beginning of that irritating controversy between Great Britain and the United States which, after so many years of disquietude tinged with bitterness, 150 THE TREATY OF 1818 ended in the loss to the former of a territory of singular value. From the restitution of Astoria to the next stage of the proceedings was but a step. While the armed vessel despatched by the United States to take over the post was still upon the seas, a negotiation had been begun at London between plenipotentiaries of the two powers, for the adjustment of various matters left untouched by the Treaty of Ghent. Among these was the question of the claims of the respective countries to the territory west of the Rocky Mountains. The United States, it appeared, did not assert a perfect title to that region; but she insisted that her claim was at least good against that of Britain. Great Britain was no less inclined to consider her own rights as antedating those of any other power, at least in the country north of the Columbia. Messrs. Rush and Gallatin for the United States, and Messrs. Robinson and Goul- burne for Great Britain, conducted the deliberations. There was an exchange of superficial argument, which did little more than confirm the situation established by the restoration of Astoria a few months previously. An agreement in which the deadlock that had now been reached stood fully revealed was at last arrived at, October 20th, 1818. Under its terms, neither nation was granted exclusive sovereignty in the region lying between the 42nd and 55th parallels; both, however, might trade or establish settlements 151 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS i at unoccupied points; each was granted a rightful title to the posts it had already built; and either might interfere to protect its subjects in local quarrels. The agreement was limited to ten years. Both nations hoped, ere the period was ended, to strengthen their respective rights to possession: England by the actual occupancy of her fur traders; the United States by the inevitable expansion of the republic across the mountains, if, as was still in doubt, the Pacific Fur Company should not rise from its ashes. By both, therefore, the treaty was construed as a victory. Yet it settled nothing; it merely launched the question upon the uncertain sea of the future, to drift whithersoever the currents of chance might carry it. With the year 1818, therefore, and the conclusion of the agreement above mentioned, the Oregon boundary question stood forth in clear-cut outline before the nations upon whom time had laid its solution. There was great ignorance, great indifference concerning it; but for the twenty-eight years of its troubled existence, though much that was new in argument was brought to bear from time to time, the issue itself remained unchanged. Great Britain held throughout that the boundary should follow the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia, descending the river thence to the sea ; the United States claimed the entire coast from California to Alaska as of right, but were at all times willing to agree that the boundary should 152 TREATIES WITH SPAIN AND RUSSIA follow the 49th parallel to the Pacific. Only the more important phases of the question and of the arguments employed as it passed through the mazes of diplomacy can be touched upon in the following paragraphs. On February 22nd, 1819, the Florida treaty was signed between the United States and Spain. The treaty, apart from its main object, dealt largely with the boundary between Louisiana and Spanish territory. This, it was agreed, should follow the 42nd parallel from the headwaters of the Arkansas to the Pacific. North of that line the Spanish title to the coast was vested in the United States—a provision that led to much searching of records later, in the endeavour to determine the value of the title thus transferred. Soon after, negotiations as to spheres of influence were begun by the United States with Russia, whose arm had stretched as far south as the California coast. As a result, a treaty was obtained in 1824 which fixed the line of 54° 40' as the limit beyond which neither nation was to found establishments without permission of the other. In the year following, as has been already noted, a similar boundary was agreed upon by Russia and Great Britain, with this difference, that the claim of the latter to the interior country extending northward to the Arctic Ocean was at the same time admitted. Some attempt at a joint conference between the three powers had previously failed, in part through 153 * SIR JAMES DOUGLAS emotions raised by the promulgation of the Monroe doctrine. Meanwhile negotiations between Great Britain and the United States were re-opened in London, the situation being in this way cleared for the renewal of the argument as between these countries alone. Spain, Russia and France, the remaining powers who, at one time or other, had held claims to varying portions of the coast, were now finally eliminated from the controversy. For over three years the recrudescence of the question in this simplified form provoked a vigour of discussion that was exceeded only during the closing stages of the dispute, still some eighteen years in the future. Great Britain was represented by Huskisson and Stratford Canning, the United States by Rush. A claim to exclusive ownership by the latter, based on the Spanish transfer, the discoveries of Gray, and the founding of Astoria, and backed by a reference to the Monroe doctrine, led to an immediate impasse. A debate in congress soon after, in which a proposal was made to occupy the Columbia by a military force, had the result of bringing for the first time unequivocally into light the latent feeling of the British cabinet with regard to Oregon, as a territory not worth fighting for, though not to be relinquished in a manner repugnant to British pride. Unfortunately, the knowledge of this soon passed to the American camp. When the negotiations were resumed in 1826, Gallatin succeeding Rush, and Addington 154 it THE SETTLEMENT OF 1827 taking the place of Canning, the revelation had undoubted weight in obtaining an arrangement which virtually perpetuated the agreement of 1818. For both parties a compromise of the sort might again be interpreted as a victory. Great Britain retained the advantages of actual possession, which since the War of 1812 hadfceen complete, and the prospective profits of the fur trade. The United States might still reflect with satisfaction that the settler, who alone would confer a permanent interest in the land, was far more likely to come from the republic than from England. No loss of dignity was sustained on either side; and to break an amicable and profitable arrangement for a mere title of possession would, as Greenhow remarks, have been foolish as well as unrighteous. The knowledge and acumen displayed by both parties in the notes exchanged during the closing stages of the negotiations were well-nigh perfect, being in strong contrast with the slip-shod information that did service in the protocols of eight years previously. They were, of course, of no avail in modifying the result, except in one particular: the arrangement of 1827 was made subject to abrogation at any time by either party upon twelve months' notice. The matter thereupon relapsed for over ten years longer into a state of calm. But if parliament, congress, and the diplomatic corps heard nothing of the controversy during that interval, the question was far from slumbering. By 155 : i If SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the irresistible march of events, it had in fact been brought before the tribunal whose judgment was to be final. The Oregon boundary had at last become a popular question. Reference has been already made to that stream of settlement which, beginning soon after 1830, had, within the decade and a half which followed, sent thousands of American farmers into the valleys south of the Columbia. The United States, with the knowledge gained in 1827, saw in this the fulfilment of her expectation. There was no need now of armed occupation; every settler was a soldier, and his wife and family part of an American garrison. Much matter was silently gathered, in the way of settlers'petitions and reports of missionaries and traders, against the day of final reckoning. A little later, congress was able to add to this the call of the provisional government erected in Oregon in the anticipation of an immediate extension of United States sovereignty. Popular murmurings grew meanwhile into a shout. Pamphlets and books were multiplied apace. With skilful repression, however, the issue was excluded from the negotiations held with Lord Ashburton in 1842 which had for subject the north-eastern boundary. But with that victory won, the flood of passion was no longer stemmed. Tyler's conciliatory language in 1843, served but as fuel to the flame. The exchange of views in 1844 and later, between the British minister Pakenham and Messrs. Calhoun and Buchanan for the United States, revealed only a 156 THE FINAL SETTLEMENT modification of the previous arguments, except for the altered tone of the American proposals. The Baltimore platform of 1844, on which Polk was elected president, declared the title of the United States to the " whole of Oregon " to be " clear and unquestionable," and " fifty-four forty or fight " became the shibboleth of half a nation. The " whole of Oregon," it may be repeated, meant the entire region between California and Alaska, three quarters of which had been discovered and explored, and were now held, by the British fur traders. Popular clamour alone forced a claim of this magnitude upon the government, which as the event proved, was ready enough to agree to a compromise. Polk as president, did what he was elected to do in the matter of Oregon. Arbitration was refused on the ground of the difficulty of securing an unbiassed tribunal in monarchical Europe. The chances of war were freely canvassed in both countries, and there was bluster on both sides. Moderate language, however, was at all times preserved in the official correspondence. In the end, a simple notice of the abrogation of the existing treaty was served upon England, who at once proposed the 49th parallel as the boundary from the mountains to the middle of the channel which divides Vancouver Island from the mainland, the line to run from that point southerly by the middle of the same channel to the Pacific. Clauses were added giving certain rights of navigation to Great 157 , f IHttl SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Britain on the Columbia, and safeguarding the property of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Companies in the territory south of the 49th degree. The suggestion was at once accepted by the United States. The boundary, it was found by the orators, was wonderfully adapted to the natural divisions of the two countries, parting the two great watersheds of the Fraser and the Columbia with the same accuracy that it divided, east of the mountains, the rivers flowing into Hudson Bay from those that fall into the Gulf of Mexico. It had, indeed, been part of Gallatin's argument in 1826-7 that the 49th parallel divided the disputed frontage on the Pacific into two nearly equal parts, whereas, if the Columbia were accepted as the boundary, less than one-third would accrue to the United States. Better, however, than its geographical excellence, appreciation of which can scarcely be looked for in Canada, the new boundary represented the peaceful solution of a long and trying difficulty, the arbitrament of which by war between two kindred peoples would have been an unspeakable calamity, however much it may be regretted that more of justice had not mingled with the terms of settlement. Such, in the essentials, was the manner in which that famous controversy concerning the division of Oregon arose, raged, and was finally placed at rest. Its dust has long been laid; and there is no desire on any hand to disturb it. It is necessary, however, 158 ACQUISITION OF SOVEREIGNTY in this place, to note, in addition to the foregoing, something of the matter as well as the manner of the contest, now that the smoke of it has rolled far off and the facts are as we may assume they will remain. The wealth, indeed the endless diffuseness, of the material fras been remarked. It permits a perfect view of the opposing claims as they appeared to their exponents, and furnishes as well a comprehensive means of classifying those opinions according to the accepted principles of international usage. Sovereignty over new territory may be acquired by a nation in five ways: by discovery; by settlement; by contiguity; by treaty; and by prescription. All acts upon which a claim to sovereignty may be based must, of course, be those of a government and not of unauthorized individuals. The aquisition of territory is a grave act, imposing as a necessary consequence upon the state acquiring it the manifold duties of administration. Private persons cannot assume such responsibilities, and their discoveries, settlements or treaties confer no benefits and impose no obligations upon the state from which they have proceeded. In the light of these principles let us notice some of the claims of the several powers which at one time or other possessed an interest in Oregon. Discovery (which may be grouped with settlement in this brief resume^ in itself does not convey a perfect title in international law. It is the first 159 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS step to a title—an "inchoate act of sovereignty"; but it must be followed by possession and settlement; and the settlement must be continuous and permanent. If occupation lapses for any reasonable length of time, the title lapses with it. As to the discovery of much of the north-west coast, Spain might undoubtedly claim that honour; and the establishment of Nootka was designed to confer the added right of possession and occupation. But it was never acknowledged that this single settlement could hold so vast a region, or that the voyages of Cook and others might not also rank as voyages of discovery. The convention of Nootka gave to England in 1790 equality with Spain in north-western America. That Gray and Lewis and Clark were the first to reach the lower waters of the Columbia was undeniable; as it was equally undeniable that the northern and principal branch was first seen by Thompson, and that Meares and Vancouver had preceded Gray on the coast, though they had not sighted the great river itself. Again, if the founding of Astoria preceded the British posts of the upper river, those of New Caledonia preceded both. As to the question whether the operations of fur-trading associations, such as the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies, constituted occupation in the sense recognized by international usage, the view in general of the United States was that they did not. Yet the establishment at Astoria was in no sense different to the posts of 160 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT the British companies, and the United States from the moment of the restoration sought to base on it a claim to the adjacent territory, notwithstanding the immediate protest of England that the settlement was an encroachment on British dominions. The territory to which the post of a fur trader might constitute a claim would seem to depend upon the radius of influence exerted. The Russian settlement in California, for example, was never made the basis of a claim for territory. Moreover, Gray's ship was a trading and not a national vessel, and the first exploration of the lower Columbia, as distinct from its discovery, was made by Broughton, an Englishman. Astoria also, according to the British view, was a purely private enterprise, and its foundation not to be construed as occupation in a national sense. The Hudson's Bay Company, on the other hand, possessed at least a quasi-official existence, under royal charter and an assurance of protection from the British government. It exercised judicial functions in respect to civil and criminal processes over its servants, while the jurisdiction of the Canadian courts of law extended over the entire country coterminous with the limits of the company's franchise. It engaged in the cultivation of the soil before a single immigrant from the United States had planted foot in Oregon. Gallatin, who denied that any claim to sovereignty could arise out of the occupation of the country by mere fur-trading corporations established for the 161 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS purpose of traffic alone, admitted that the modest factory at Calcutta had grown into the British Empire of India, having an undisputed rule over hundreds of millions of people—in other words that the force of international law in this connection takes its colour largely from attendant circumstances. Such as it was, the British occupation of the Columbia, after the War of 1812, and especially after the amalgamation of the North-West and Hudson's Bay Companies in 1821, was complete. During the decade after the restoration of Astoria, scarcely an American trader was seen in the country or on the coast, notwithstanding that in the meantime the introduction of steam vessels on the Mississippi and the Missouri had greatly improved facilities for communication. From 1813 until 1837, in fact, the quiet and almost exclusive use of the Columbia was enjoyed by Britain. Even in the final stages of the controversy the American settlements were entirely on the southern bank of the Columbia, while the British posts lay both north and south. At an early date, however, Great Britain threw away whatever benefits she might have won by reason of this occupation, when she placed herself on record as waiving any claim to exclusive sovereignty over any portion of the country between the Columbia and the 49th degree, and as standing simply for joint occupancy while the right to exclusive domain remained in abeyance. " The qualified rights which Great Britain now possesses 162 CONTIGUITY over the whole of the territory in question " wrote Huskisson and Addington in 1826, "embrace the right to navigate the waters of those countries, the right to settle in and over any part of them, and the right to freely trade with the inhabitants and occupiers of the same. It is ftilly admitted that the United States possesses the same rights, but beyond they possess none." The restoration of Astoria was not, according to Great Britain, in any sense a relinquishment of title in the surrounding territory. But the practical effect of the admission above was that the nation who first occupied the country with settlers should be entitled to exercise those rights of sovereignty which possession of this kind commonly bestows. How time fought the battle of the United States in this has been already shown. Contiguity has been defined as of two kinds— perfect and imperfect. The first involves the right of a nation to exclude all others from a territory the command of which, though actually not within her boundaries, is essential to her convenience and security. It was not, of course, contended that a foreign settlement west of the Rocky Mountains would threaten the welfare of the Atlantic seaboard. The United States had no Pacific commerce to protect, and at no time prior to 1846 was the possession of Oregon essential to her safety or existence. The report of General Jesup to a select committee of congress in 1823, to the effect that the command of the Columbia was necessary for protection from 163 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the tribes of the frontier, revealed even in its recommendations that the more immediate gain in contemplation was the dispossession of the British traders. The other title of contiguity has been defined as a preferable right to acquire lands, which, though they may be neither settled nor necessary for convenience or defence, are geographically one with the acquiring nation. In this connection it was urged that Oregon belonged more naturally to the United States than to any other power. From the earliest attempts at colonization in America, the whole breadth of the continent between certain parallels of latitude was ordinarily granted to colonies established only at points on the borders of the Atlantic. Moreover, it could not be doubted that, after 1835, Oregon and Texas offered the most natural outlet for the rapidly growing population of the United States, in view especially of the prevailing opinion that the adjoining central division of the continent offered no inducements to settlers. Nevertheless it should be borne in mind that even from the United States, Oregon, in the words of Calhoun, was distant more than thirteen thousand miles by sea, a voyage, in 1846, of six months, and more than two thousand miles by land, a march of one hundred and twenty days. That Louisiana originally extended to the Pacific was denied by Ad- dington. But that the territory under dispute lay as much in the path of the British crossing from the Peace and Saskatchewan as of those who traded from 164 TREATY RIGHTS the Mississippi and Missouri was also insisted upon. As a matter of fact, the free navigation of the Columbia was in the early years essential to the maintenance of the British trading-posts in the interior, south as well as north of the 49th parallel, and was the basis of that vigorous attempt to bring the whole coast northward under British trade influence, the success of which has been described. Colonization from Britain or Canada was not for the time thought possible. The latter had no redundance of population, and to both more suitable fields lay closer at hand. At the very moment, in fact, the United States themselves were drawing steadily from Britain her surplus population in a stream that could not easily have been diverted to other channels. Much was made in the course of the dispute of the bearing of various treaties upon the rights involved. The Treaty of Ghent, in its application to Astoria, has been already referred to. The conventions between Russia and England, and between Russia and the United States, also, need not be further mentioned. Debate raged fiercest about the Florida treaty of 1819. What was the nature of the title derived from Spain by that treaty ? By the United States it was regarded as perfect against that of any other European power at the time of transfer. By England it was denied that Spain had any title whatever to convey in 1819. The explanation of this diversity of opinion dates back to the 165 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Nootka convention and the war which broke out between England and Spain in 1796 and continued with only a short intermission until 1809. Granting that the Nootka convention admitted Great Britain to certain rights on the north-west coast, it was held by the United States that the convention was an instrument of a commercial nature merely, that the right then granted to England to found settlements did not involve the conveyance of sovereignty to any part of the region, and that in any other event the convention had been terminated by the subsequent wars. In 1819, according to this view, the United States fell heir to the original right of Spain to the exclusive ownership of the coast. To this the British rejoinder was that the convention was not a merely temporary or commercial concession; that it destroyed rather than implied the exclusive title of Spain; that the settlements permitted were quite compatible with local sovereignty; and in general that the title which Spain had failed to make good in 1790 and which Great Britain had successfully challenged at the moment of its greatest strength, could not now be revived simply because of an agreement with a third power, the more so that, for over a quarter of a century, it had fallen into complete disuse. After her formal abandonment of the coast in 1795, Spain's only right was one which she shared in common with England and the United States; the only right, therefore, that she could convey in 1819 was one which the latter al- 166 PRESCRIPTION ready possessed. As to the Louisiana purchase, this was never successfully maintained as affecting boundaries west of the Rocky Mountains, unless as an argument from contiguity; moreover, Louisiana in 1790 belonged to Spain and was therefore included in the provisions of the Nootka convention and in the later considerations applying to the title of Spain. Out of the right of contiguity, perfect and imperfect, it might be contended that the United States had evolved the last of the rights above mentioned— that of prescription. To prescription the application of the Monroe doctrine was akin. By the free and independent condition which the American continents had assumed, they were no longer, according to the Monroe doctrine, to be considered as subjects for colonization by European powers. But the future colonization of Oregon, it had been agreed, would determine the destiny of the region. So far as the doctrine applied to South America, which had recently cast off the yoke of Spain, Great Britain sympathized with its object and was prepared to support it. In the case of the Oregon question, however, it had the effect merely of rendering the British government much less disposed to concession, while tending to produce a union of views, approaching almost to a league, between Great Britain and Russia, which in the result proved of distinct disadvantage to the United States. An effort to apply the cumulative principle to the arguments of the United States under the above 167 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS headings was made during the negotiations of 1827. If, separately, objection might be made to each, considered together they were believed to establish the American claim on a solid foundation. To this the reply was that the claims based on discovery, acquisition from Spain, and contiguity, were in many respects incompatible the one with the other, and could not, therefore, be united. If, for example, the title of Spain by first discovery, or that of France, as the original owner of Louisiana, were advanced, it was evident that one or other of these countries held the territory at the time of Gray's discoveries, and that the latter therefore could not be put forward as conferring a claim. If, however, the importance of Gray and the Astorians was emphasized, by so much were the Spanish or French titles diminished. The device of admitting imperfections in the several elements in order to give strength to the aggregate was, therefore, in the present case, of little avail. The United States, in counter-reply to this, argued that, though in different hands the several claims would conflict one with the other, they supported each other when united in the same power. Great Britain has been bitterly censured by a school of opinion in Canada for the loss of Oregon between the 49th parallel and the Columbia. The charge has this foundation: that it is possible to perceive how the country might have been 168 IGNORANCE CONCERNING OREGON saved. It will be well, however, to be explicit on this point. In the final analysis, lack of knowledge of the value of Oregon, by inducing a perfectly natural but by no means logical apathy as to its political future, was probably the cause of the loss, if lost that may be called which was never held in undisputed possession. For lack of knowledge on the part of Great Britain there was abundant excuse. The whole of the western continent which she held, disputed and undisputed alike, was in the grasp of men whose guiding purpose was to perpetuate the mystery in which the land had been wrapped from the beginning. England's attitude throughout the controversy was simply that of champion to her fur traders whose outposts had been threatened with invasion, to which in process of time was added the consideration of national pride. Moreover her ignorance of the country must be considered relatively. It was at least no greater than that of the United States until a comparatively late stage of the dispute. Jefferson almost alone in the early days of the republic showed real knowledge of the importance of the west, or at least of the diplomacy by which it was to be won. As late as 1844, when the controversy had entered its most acrimonious phase, Greenhow, the historiographer of congress, one of the most learned authorities on the subject, appraised as practically valueless the territory in dispute, though he wrote the most able of the treatises put forth in the behalf of the United 169 m SIR JAMES DOUGLAS States to prove the latter's title to the land in question. Gallatin, the American commissioner to England in 1826-7, shared the common view. In the early debates in congress opinions were freely expressed as to the worthlessness of the country. Webster had none of the popular enthusiasm concerning Oregon, at a time when the name was a slogan thoughout the United States. The mass of the people before 1840 knew little and cared less about Oregon. The ignorance of Great Britain, therefore, is not remarkable. To the British nation at large, Oregon was no more than a name. A writer in the Edinburgh Review of July 1845 reflected the best informed public sentiment of his day when he said:" It seems probable that in a few years all that formerly gave life to the country, both the hunter and the prey, will become extinct, and their place will be supplied by a thin white and half-breed population, scattered along the few fertile valleys, supported by the pasture instead of by the chase, and gradually degenerating into the barbarism, far more offensive than that of the savage, which degrades the backwoodsman." Again: "The great error of all parties has been the importance attached to Oregon." And again; j|jf " It is much that the real worthlessness of the country has been established. All that any prudent Englishman or American can wish is, that the controversy should be speedily and harmoniously settled." Still more remarkable were the conclusions 170 m THE ATTITUDE OF GREAT BRITAIN of the same writer as to the future of Oregon: I However the political questions between England and America as to the ownership of Oregon may be decided, Oregon will never be colonized overland from the United States .... Whoever is to be the future owner of Oregon, its pepple will come from Europe." Let it be said, moreover, that once the question assumed practical importance, England displayed both keenness of interest and firmness of purpose in handling it. That she had recourse in 1846 to every resort short of war is undeniable. But the truth is, her point of view had been mistaken from the first, and the battle was lost before ever it came to be fought. Diplomacy, as it proved, could avail nothing in dealing with an issue of this nature once it had arisen. Three opportunities had been presented when, by a decisive stroke, the region might have been won:in the settlement of the Nootka affair; in the treaty which closed the War of 1812 ; and in 1818. Each time a compromise was accepted in the interest of a " speedy and harmonious " settlement and in the mistaken trust that the future would strengthen the hands of Great Britain ; each time the door was left open for further controversy ; each time the renewal of the dispute found the position of Great Britain weakened. In striking contrast was the subtle and far-seeing diplomacy of the United States, which from the first permitted no ignorance of the present and 171 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS actual to preclude appreciation of the future and potential. When the time for final settlement arrived, there had been added to this general principle of acquisition for its own sake all the weight of established industrial interests, of an awakened public opinion, and of an inflamed and prejudiced national spirit. Popular clamour alone was responsible for the claim to the " whole of Oregon,"—a claim that became serious only when party politics seized upon it as an issue. England who had bred and fostered Cook, Vancouver and Mackenzie, was, in this view, nothing less than a usurper throughout the coast; while the Hudson's Bay Company, which had saved the first American settlers from starvation and murder by the Indians, was but a greedy and inhuman monopoly, the willing tool of a government that was now attempting the crime of grand larceny from the United States. Such was the temper of the American press and people when the issue was for the last time joined and lost. But the loss should bear the date, not of 1846, but of that earlier time when the first failure was recorded either to appreciate the splendid destiny which awaited the region, or to grasp the means which would have brought it permanently under British influence. The foregoing brief review of the facts and principles involved in this historic controversy will at least have shown that the issues, obscured as they 172 EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES had been by clouds of witnesses and a mass of conflicting testimony in which personal interests and national prejudices were alike intermingled, proved simple enough, once the final stage had been reached and the circumstances had forced the countries to an agreement. By these circumstances and not by any theories of international jurisprudence, was the fate of Oregon decided. In 1840 the question was as far from solution as ever. The arguments from history and law had been exhausted long ago. No exclusive right could be established by either party as the case then stood. The superior advantages which Great Britain at one time held, she had long since waived, and had been content to trust the future to its own developments. These had now matured. The great nation of the Atlantic seaboard was by every instinct of its origin and by every dictate of the policy in which its early steps had been directed, a nation of expansionists on this continent. From clearing to clearing, from settlement to settlement, from township to township, and at last from state to state, its inevitable way led westward. Even its missionaries were pioneers of empire. As Canaan became the land of Israel, so the United States possessed Oregon. It was of infinitely greater value to her than to Great Britain in 1846. No president or government, it would be safe to say, could have consented then to less than was received by the United States, no matter what rights of others were involved. War only could 178 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS have maintained Great Britain in Oregon. Of a war, after serious thought, she considered Oregon not worth the price. Thus ended it. 174 CHAPTER VI VICTORIA THE year 1843 was a turning point in the history of the north-west coast. Fate had by that time unequivocally declared that the north and not the Columbia must be the final abode of the fur trade and the nation whose protection it enjoyed. The company read the signs of the times, and had begun to prepare for the inevitable. Long before the boundary had been named, the desirability of shifting the chief seat of the trade northward had become manifest. It was impossible to secure peltries on the Columbia in the face of increasing settlement; and for some time past a point of strategic and commercial advantage, beyond reach of the conditions that were rendering Vancouver untenable, had been diligently sought by the company. There were many reasons why Camosun,1 the Indian village on the site of which the city of Victoria now stands, should have attracted the attention of the traders. Esquimalt,2 where a more commodious harbour exists, might have been deemed more suitable for a city; it was not, llOW- ^pelled "Camosack" by Douglas, who gives the native interpretation as "rush of waters." By others the name is derived from Camass, a plant with an edible root, greatly in favour of the Indians, and abundant in the vicinity of Victoria. a*fIswhoymalth" in the spelling of Douglas. 175 *•&« SIR JAMES DOUGLAS ever, a city that the company thought to establish, but a post for the prosecution of the fur trade. As early as 1837, McNeill had explored the southern end of Vancouver Island and had found an excellent harbour and fine open country, apparently well adapted for tillage and pasturage, along the shore. Simpson himself, during the voyage previously referred to, had noted the fertile soil, the abundance of timber, and the equable climate of Camosun, and had predicted that the place would become in time "the most valuable section of the coast above California." Douglas, finally, in 1842, had made a careful examination of the locality and had reported favourably. The agricultural possibilities of the region, which rendered the vicinity of Fort Vancouver of such value, were insisted upon, the requirements of the Puget Sound Company having now to be consulted no less than those of the Hudson's Bay Company proper. On the whole, the directorate in London had unrivalled information at its command before resolving on any change. McLoughlin, Douglas, Work, Ogden, Tolmie, Finlayson, Anderson and McNeill formed a body of men whose local knowledge might he regarded as perfect; while at home the company's management included several to whom every project in the councils of the nation was well-known. Fortified with the approval of both London and Vancouver, official sanction to the establishment of a fort at Camosun was soon given. The new post would be 176 FOUNDING OF VICTORIA near the ocean, yet protected from it. A great island lay to the northward; and to a huge continent it formed the natural entrepdt. It stood at a crossways of the waters, to the west being the Strait of Juan de Fuca, to the south Puget Sound, and to the north the Gulf of Georgia. It commanded the first good harbour north of San Francisco, the entrance to the Columbia having proved difficult even to the ships of that period. Some idea, too, of the trade possibilities of Alaska, the Northern Interior, the Orient, the Pacific Islands, and South America, doubtless crossed the minds of the men who sat in the council chamber of Lime Street, London. Moreover, it was a point of great natural beauty, Victoria taking rank to-day as the most picturesque of all the cities of the Pacific shore. The expedition which was dispatched to establish the post set sail from Fort Vancouver on March 1st, 1843. It consisted of fifteen men, and it was under the command of James Douglas. Nisqually and the Cowlitz country were visited for supplies; and at New Dungeness the Indians were notified of the intended action of the company. Crossing Fuca Strait, the party cast anchor within Shoal Point on March 14th. According to tradition, the spot on which Douglas first landed was knee-deep in clover at the time, from which it received the name by which it is still known—Clover Point. The native Songhees, who had a stockade at the head of the harbour, showed surprise, but no hostility, sur- 177 jj SIR JAMES DOUGLAS rounding the steamship Beaver, which had brought the party, with a swarm of welcoming canoes. Considerations of detail at once engaged the attention of Douglas. The selection of a site and the obtaining of a supply of timber for the projected fort were the first steps necessary. The question of an anchorage apparently decided the former, the post being placed where the present Court House of Victoria stands on Bastion Square. A steamer of the draught of the Beaver found no difficulty, in 1843, in casting anchor off the site of the present wharf of the Hudson's Bay Company. By March 16th, the men were already at work squaring timbers and digging wells. The natives, pleased at the prospect of trade, were given employment making pickets, each picket to be twenty-two feet long and three feet in circumference, axes and other tools being lent them for the purpose and payment being made at the rate of one blanket for forty pickets. These preliminaries under way, Douglas steamed northward in April to Forts Taku and McLoughlin, which it had been decided at headquarters to abandon, and the crews of which were needed to augment the scanty force at Fort Camosun. With Douglas to Victoria came Bolduc, the Jesuit missionary, reputed the first priest to set foot on Vancouver Island. The natives proved ready converts; over twelve hundred Songhees, Clallams and Cowichans were baptised after the first mass, 178 ERECTION OF FORT CAMOSUN which was celebrated in a chapel of pine branches and boat's canvas on March 19th, 1843. Bolduc afterwards passed to Whidby Island, where, though conversions were numerous, attempts to reform the habits of the savages met with indifferent success. By April 3rd, the missionary was back at Nisqually. It was on the first of June that the Beaver returned from her northern voyage. Taku and McLoughlin had been dismantled, and with the reinforcements thus obtained some fifty men were available for the work at Camosun. Within three months, in the prevailing pleasant weather, the stockade, one hundred and fifty yards square and eighteen feet in height, with blockhouse or bastion (thirty feet high and armed with nine-pounders, blunderbusses and cutlasses), at each corner, was finished. As finally completed, the stores, five in number, together with the post-office, smithy, carpenter shops, sleeping quarters for the men, officers' quarters, chapel, powder magazine, etc., were all within the stockade. For the sake of economy, the fort was built without nails or spikes, wooden pegs alone being used. The site selected was an open glade of oak trees, in the midst of the dense forest which ran down to the harbour and inlet. Flocks of Indians from Vancouver Island, the neighbouring archipelago, and the mainland, attentively watched proceedings, but in the face of con- 179 1 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS stant vigilance offered no opposition beyond acts of petty theft. Later they too began to erect lodges along the harbour bank. The schooner Cadboro arrived with further supplies from Fort Vancouver while the work was in progress; and by October, Douglas, regarding the establishment as capable of self-defence, set sail with the Beaver and Cadboro for the Columbia. Charles Ross, who had been in charge at Fort McLoughlin, was left as senior officer, with Roderick Finlayson, transferred from Fort Simpson, second in command. Finlayson, whose duties included the supervision of construction operations, thus became the first builder of houses on Vancouver Island. A word apart should surely be spared in honour of those staunch and trim little vessels, the Cadboro and the Beaver, whose doings have already figured prominently in this narrative. For nearly forty years their names appear in almost every record of the company's seaward movements. Every island and canal of that dangerous labyrinth of waters which lies, a by-word to sailors, between Sitka and Fort Vancouver, was known to their captains as a book. The schooner Cadboro, seventy-two tons burden, had been built at Rye in 1824. Before her destruction in 1862, every soul but one of the thirty servants of the company whom she brought on her maiden voyage from England had been buried. With her picked crew of thirty-five and her six guns, she did 180 RODERICK FINLAYSON the work of many men in the spread of civilization on the Pacific. The Beaver, which had the unique distinction of being the first steamship to navigate the great western ocean, was also built for the company in Great Britain. In August 1835, with her escort, the Columbia, she was pointed for Cape Horn, rounding which she buffeted her way northward for four months under sail, her machinery not being installed until she reached Fort Vancouver. Built of live oak and teak, with engines the best of their day, for forty-three years of hard and constant usage she plied the thousand bays and estuaries of the coast. She was still sound in every timber in spite of adventures innumerable with rock and reef when, on a dark night in 1888, she met her doom at the entrance to Burrard Inlet. In the spring of 1844, Ross, who was in charge at Fort Camosun, died, and Finlayson was appointed in his stead, the son of Ross being sent as second in command. Of Scottish birth, Finlayson had joined the company in 1837, and had seen hard service at Taku, Stikien and Simpson. Shrewd and kindly, he had commended himself to Douglas by his rigid devotion to duty. His narrative of the events that culminated in the founding of Fort Camosun is among the most valuable of the contemporary documents that have survived and are available relative to the history of the north-west coast during the first half of the nineteenth century. 181 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Events proceeded smoothly at Camosun for some time after the accession of Finlayson. The first serious test of the defences of the post arose through the restlessness of the neighbouring Indians. Directly opposite the fort, at a distance of four hundred yards, lay the village of the Songhees, under their chief Tsilalthach. Communication was constant between the points by means of boats. A wandering band of Cowichans under Tsoughilam were encamped near by. The cattle of the fur- traders feeding in the open spaces about the fort, proved too great a temptation to the savages and a number were slaughtered and eaten. The company had not made the animals, they averred, nor did it own the fields that fattened them. A demand for payment provoked at first surprise, then anger, ending in a united but ineffectual attack upon the fort. Finlayson contented himself in reply with revealing the deadly powers of the company's nine- pounders by blowing to pieces a lodge from which he had previously taken care to remove the occupants. The effect was instantaneous ; on the following day full payment for the cattle was made. Shortly after, danger from fire having been caused in the vicinity of the fort, Finlayson compelled the Indians, not without angry parleyings, to remove to the other side of the harbour, thus originating the present Indian reserve at Victoria. In the spring of 1845, again, a party of Skagits from the mainland coming to trade at the fort were waylaid by 182 GROWTH OF SHIPPING the Songhees at Clover Point and their goods stolen. Whereupon Finlayson again interfered and compelled the restitution of the goods. A demonstration of the powers of the great gun being a second time asked for, Finlayson directed that a canoe be placed in the harbour opposite the bastion. Pointing the canon at the object, he fired, the ball passing through and bounding to the opposite shore. The lesson had its effect. Next in importance to relations with the Indians in the early annals of the post was the birth and progress of its shipping. It was in the spring of 1845 that the first vessel consigned to Fort Victoria1 direct from England arrived in the harbour. This was the bark Vancouver belonging to the company. With the Cowlitz and the Columbia she made yearly voyages thereafter from London, bringing outfits for a twelvemonth in advance. In the same year also occurred the visit of the frigate America with Captain the Hon. John Gordon, brother of the Earl of Aberdeen, then Prime Minister of England, on board. Gordon's mission was to examine into and report on the value of Oregon, including Vancouver Island, the controversy concerning which with the United States was at the moment entering upon its final stage. An incident related by Finlayson of his visitor's ill-success at salmon fishing gave currency lrrhe native title was retained nntil 1845, the change being first to " Albert" and later in the same year to " Victoria." 183 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS to the popular fiction that Oregon was lost to Britain because the sockeye would not rise to a fly. That Gordon's prejudices, however, and the unfavourable impression carried away by his party concerning the Columbia valley did not assist the home authorities in attaching a proper importance to the country, may be assumed. From the year 1845, also, the American whalers of the North Pacific touched occasionally at Victoria for supplies, until the Hawaiian Islands were found to afford a more convenient port of call. About the same time, while the cry " fifty-four forty or fight," was still reechoing through the United States and excitement ran high in Great Britain as well, H.M.S. Constance, with five hundred men and officers, arrived at Esquimalt. Finlayson seized the opportunity for a military display, for the sake of the effect upon the Indians. The frigate Fisguard also visited Victoria in the same year and exercised her men on shore with a similar object in view. Two surveying ships, the Herald and Pandora came in the following season, and re-mapped the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the harbours of Esquimalt and Victoria, the Canal de Haro and other waters. These and other ships of war despatched for the protection of national rights were supplied with beef and vegetables from the farms of the company. Meanwhile the general trade, which during the preceding twenty years had converged upon the Columbia and Fort Vancouver, came gradually more and more to centre at Victoria. 184 I I FARMING OPERATIONS The farming operations of the company had engaged attention from the first. Even before the fort itself had been completed, a number of men were set to work at clearing the surrounding land for the raising of vegetables and cereals. Wooden implements alone were available the first year, an example of the thrift of Douglas, and the corn was trodden out by cattle in the barn. Some of the younger natives were employed at the work, proving useful ox-drivers. They were paid, as usual, in goods. Horses and cattle were imported later from Nisqually, by the ever active Beaver and Cadboro, and a farm of several hundred acres was eventually opened in the immediate vicinity of Victoria. In all, the company's farms on the island were three in number; the Fort Farm as it was called, on the level space where the city now stands; Beckley Farm, in the neighbourhood of James Bay; and the North Dairy Farm, which was situated inland. The latter, as the name would imply, was devoted chiefly to dairying which would seem to have received special attention; three dairies, each with seventy milch cows, producing seventy kegs of butter each in a season, being in full working order within four years of the beginning of operations. Oats, barley, pease and potatoes were also raised; and forty bushels of wheat to the acre was a not uncommon yield. The price obtained for the latter from the Russians was four shillings and twopence per bushel, paid by bills on St. Petersburg. A large 185 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS wooden building, long to be seen at the com- ' pany's wharf at Victoria, was used as a granary, wherein the grain from Fort Vancouver, Puget Sound and Langley, as well as that grown on the island itself, was held for shipment to Sitka. Both Russian and British vessels were engaged in the traffic. The profitableness of the agricultural venture on Vancouver Island was assured throughout by the abundant supply and cheap price of labour. The natural increase of the cattle, moreover, was such that it was soon found impossible to herd them, many escaping into the woods, where they were found years afterwards by hunters in the interior of the island. In 1848, the brigades from the northern interior, instead of descending to the Columbia by way of Kamloops and Okanagan as usual, followed the more direct route of the Fraser Valley to Langley. A year before the settlement of the Oregon boundary, Anderson, who was then in charge at Alexandria, had foreseen the necessity of the change and had carefully explored the country between Kamloops and the Lower Fraser, notwithstanding the stupendous obstacles interposed by nature. Fort Yale was founded as a result in 1848 and Fort Hope a short time later. For the decade which followed these events, the main route to the interior lay from Langley to Fort Hope by water, thence by trail across the defile of the Coquihalla River to the Thompson. 186 death of McLoughlin The completion of this arrangement marks all but the end of Fort Vancouver. With the levying of American duties, its days were numbered. The great McLoughlin had passed from the scene, the victim, as has already been described, of forces which he had neither the will nor the power to resist. To curb his influence, a board, of which Douglas and Ogden were the other members, had been appointed some time earlier for the management of the Western Department. The end came in 1846 when his resignation followed a report by a commission sent by the British government to make inquiry into the military conditions of Oregon, with a mandate from the company as well. Douglas thereafter became the senior officer of the Western Department, McKay being given the supervision of the northern posts which till then had been under the immediate eye of Douglas. McLoughlin passed to Oregon City, then rising at the falls of the Willamette. Sorrow ended his days. He had renounced, after the quarrel with the company, his allegiance to Great Britain. But his new countrymen would have none of him. His lands were taken from him by the United States and restitution deferred until he himself was beyond caring. He was the patriarch, as Whitman was the martyr, of Oregon. There was a time when a word from McLoughlin would have hurled the American immigrant across the mountains and left to the United States no other alternative but a conquest by arms. 187 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Yet who would name him traitor ? His humanity lifts him above common men. With the year 1849 an important period is reached in the history of Victoria and British Columbia. With the events of that year and their immediate results, the city enlarges into a colony. Briefly, these events included the final removal of the chief emporium of the company from Fort Vancouver to Victoria;the discovery of gold in California; the opening of the first coal mines on Vancouver Island; the acquisition of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company; the conversion of the island into a Crown colony; and the appointment of a governor from England. To each of these developments in turn a word must be given. The abandonment of Fort Vancouver was marked by the removal of Douglas with his wife and family to Victoria. They came by the ship Cadboro, having crossed by horses from the Columbia to Puget Sound. The family at first took up its abode in the fort, in the absence of a separate residence for the chief factor. Finlayson, on the assumption by Douglas of the chief command, was made the head accountant for the Western Department, a position which he held until 1862. Another notable arrival of the year was the Rev. R. J. Staines, of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, who came as 188 GOLD IN CALIFORNIA chaplain to the company, and whose eccentricities, tribulations and death form a strange mixture of the ridiculous and the tragic. Helmcken, the future speaker of the legislature and son-in-law of Douglas, was a second arrival of the same year. Victoria henceforth became the centre of the Hudson's Bay Company's interests west of the Rocky Mountains. Victoria being after San Francisco almost the only point on the north Pacific coast from which supplies could be obtained, the effect of the gold discoveries of 1848-9 in California on the life of the place was immediate. Prices rose to an exorbitant degree at San Francisco and the miners employed the winter months, when work on the placers was Impossible, in the search for a cheaper market. Finlayson mistook the first contingent for pirates. Their mission explained, however, they were allowed to purchase such goods as were less immediately required for the company's trade at the rate of eleven dollars per ounce for their gold. Gold in its native state had never before been seen by Finlayson, and the transaction gave him serious doubts until he had communicated with headquarters. The reply received was that more goods would be sent for the new demand. The traffic however, was not without its disadvantages, as the excitement caused among the company's employees seriously disorganized the service, a large number leaving for the diggings, while the pay of others had to be increased in order to in- 189 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS duce them to remain. Indians were employed to replace the stragglers. Finlayson himself was offered a thousand dollars a month to take charge of a store in San Francisco, an offer which he declined, for the reason that though his salary was but one hundred pounds per annum from the company, he was under an engagement to give twelve months' notice before quitting the service. m In 1849, the development of the first coal mine in British Columbia was begun. Outcroppings of the mineral had been noted years before in several localities; at Beaver Harbour, where Fort Rupert was erected after the abandonment of Fort McLoughlin, considerable quantities had been known to exist. Fort Rupert was uncompleted when Michael Muir, a Scottish miner, with his wife, a family of sons and daughters, and a small party of miners, was sent by the company to establish workings on the deposits. Upon sinking a shaft ninety feet, however, Muir declared the seam too small to be workable, and, complications with the Indians arising, the miners left for California. The Muir shaft was continued later to a depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet, but without favourable result. Additional and better mining machinery arrived in 1851, but more promising deposits having been disclosed by the Indians at Nanaimo, the plant was removed thither, and the beginning of what was destined to be one of the most important industries 190 m feMfi TRANSFER OF VANCOUVER ISLAND of the Pacific slope was made. The famous Douglas seam was located in 1852. In the same year, Fort Nanaimo was erected in the neighbourhood. Two thousand tons were shipped in the following year, bringing eleven dollars per ton at Nanaimo, and twenty-eight at San Francisco. Coal outcroppings were subsequently discovered at various points on the island, on the contiguous coast of the mainland and on the Queen Charlotte Islands, but the fields in the vicinity of Nanaimo were the only ones on the coast that became of commercial value. The Muir family, it would seem, retired eventually from the service of the company, as the names of five of them are attached to a petition of the independent settlers which was presented to the first governor of the colony on his departure for England. ' There remains to be dealt with the highly important series of incidents that group themselves about the acquisition of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company, the first attempt at colonization, and the first and tentative establishment of civil government. The three divisions of the subject are inextricably interwoven. In 1838, the license which had been granted to the company in 1821 to trade, to the exclusion of all other British subjects, in the territory owned by Great Britain north and west of Canada and the United States, was renewed, with certain important additions, for a further period of twenty-one years. 191 m SIR JAMES DOUGLAS The additions bound the company among other things to enforce the execution of criminal processes, and to frame rules and regulations for the moral and religious improvement of the Indians. To the government the right to erect colonies or provinces within the territories included in the grant was retained, together with the privilege of applying thereto any form of civil government, independent of the company, which might be deemed proper. Though this license, as will be seen, did not expire until 1859, the question as to the policy to be adopted by the government with regard to the colonizing of the country arose at a much earlier date. Almost immediately upon the arrangement of the international boundary, the example afforded by events on the Columbia had its effect in England. Immigrants were pouring into that favoured region, towns were springing into being, and industry was expanding with a speed that was full of meaning to the overcrowded population of Great Britain. From the company's standpoint also, the moment was an anxious one. There seemed every prospect that the wave of settlement which had driven the trade north of the 49th parallel would follow it even further. The company's conduct in Rupert's land, moreover, had recently come in for severe criticism. Yet concessions must be obtained if the monopoly was to be saved with any semblance of its old-time power. Closely in touch as the directorate was with the official mind of Great 192 OFFER OF HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY Britain, it was realized that the time for action was before the settler had appeared and the subject had achieved prominence. It was shrewdly perceived also that the company would best attain its object, not by opposing colonization, which was now seen to be inevitable, but by securing control of the colonizing process so that it might retard or direct it at pleasure. The government was, therefore, approached with a proposal on the part of the company to undertake the rule and colonization of its various territories in North America. The magnitude of the suggestion apparently startled the • cabinet, which, with the recent troubles of Lord Selkirk's colony on the Red River in mind, had now clear knowledge of the relations which the settler bore to the fur trader. The negotiations were suspended, in something not unlike alarm; whereupon the company adroitly diminished its proposals to include only the territory west of the Rocky Mountains. Failing that, even Vancouver Island alone, it was intimated, would be accepted. Colonization, the company affirmed as a part of its suggestion, would be assisted in every way possible, and all moneys received for lands or minerals would be applied to the improvement of the country. The question was considered by the government with reference solely to Vancouver Island. Parliament debated the proposal, Gladstone being among those who spoke against it. In the end the government declared itself in favour of concluding an arrange- 193 t iHSmiII SIR JAMES DOUGLAS ment with the company. No other agency had the necessary capital, organization and experience for the undertaking, and the company already possessed the exclusive right of trade in the Indian territory for eleven years longer. It was willing, moreover, to vest the appointment of a governor in the Crown. After protracted negotiations as to terms, the grant was consummated on January 13th, 1849. Vancouver Island, with the royalties of its seas and mines, was handed over to the Hudson's Bay Company, in perpetuity, subject only to the domination of the Crown, and to a rental of seven shillings payable on the first day of each year. The company was to settle a colony of British subjects within five years; to sell the land at a reasonable price, retaining only ten per cent, of the proceeds and applying the balance to improvements; to reserve such lands as might be necessary for naval stations and government establishments; to report every two years with regard to the number of colonists settled and the acreage of lands sold; and to defray the expenses of all civil and military establishments, except during hostilities between Great Britain and a foreign power. The grant, it was stipulated, would be forfeited if no settlement were effected within five years. The imperial government reserved the right to recover the island, at the expiry of the company's exclusive license, by payment of the sum actually expended by the company in colonization. 194 GRANT OF VANCOUVER ISLAND The wisdom of the grant was widely questioned. Undoubtedly the desire of the company was to control rather than to promote the settlement of the coast. This was shown at once by the prospectus and advertisement which it published on the conclusion of the arrangement. A reasonable price for land, it appeared, was, in the company's view, one pound per acre. Moreover, for every hundred acres so purchased the buyer was to convey at his own expense three families or six single settlers to the colony. Needless to say, these conditions placed a hopeless burden on settlement. It is not to be thought that they were ever intended to do otherwise. Colonization was incompatible with the fur trade. As a business matter, the agreement was very profitable. It continued to the company the use of the country; and vested rights were created for which, in the end, the traders were well paid. Even apart from the above, the methods which were adopted to induce immigration to the new colony were worthy of censure. It would not be fair to say that the company did not want settlers on Vancouver Island: a certain number were needed to preserve the semblance of good faith; moreover, servants for the Puget Sound Agricultural Company were a necessity. In the representations made, however, to the few who were rich enough to undertake the company's terms, and to those sent out as employees, an impression was conveyed 195 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS m as to the state of affairs in the colony, which, if not actually contrary to fact, led the people to expect entirely different conditions from those which prevailed. The directors in London, of course, knew little of the life of the colony; while the officials on the ground had been graduated in a school of hardship which prevented them from appreciating the feelings of men and women transplanted from the garden of civilization to an unbroken wilderness. The situation of the American settler in Oregon, where land without money and almost without conditions was to be had, did not tend by comparison to increase satisfaction. The California gold fields, too, exercised their lure and did much to retard the settlement of the British colony. The first settler on Vancouver Island under the terms of the agreement was W. Colquhoun Grant. Hearing of the project, he had sold his commission in an English cavalry regiment, and with a party of eight persons, fitted out at his own expense, arrived on the island. After careful examination of the country, he chose a location at the head of Sooke Inlet, twenty miles north-west of Victoria. After two years he tired of the life, and leased his farm to the labourers he had brought out. Under their tenure the place fell into neglect, and was subsequently sold to the Muir family. Grant's purpose, according to Finlayson, was to form a purely Scottish settlement; the plan, it was even said, included 196 EARLY SETTLERS a Gaelic schoolmaster and a Highland piper. James Cooper was a second early arrival who was to figure for a longer time in the history of the colony. Landing in 1851, he brought from England a small iron vessel in sections, to be put together at Victoria. He had previously been in the service of the company as commander of a vessel between London and Fort Vancouver, and his object now was to carry on an independent trade, for which his experience had well fitted him. In 1852 he launched a scheme for buying cranberries from the natives of the Fraser River for the San Francisco market, where under the prevailing conditions he could obtain as high as one dollar per gallon for the produce. The Hudson's Bay Company, however, had no mind for enterprises of this nature. Cooper had no sooner opened his traffic than Douglas sent instructions to Fort Langley to buy all the cranberries the Indians offered at a price beyond the reach of other traders. Cooper thereupon took up land at Metchosin and farmed three hundred acres for some years in partnership with one Thomas Blenkhorn. Other early arrivals were eight coal miners and two labourers on the Harpooner in June 1849; eight emigrants on the bark Norman Morrison in 1850; and one hundred and twenty hired labourers on the Tory in June 1851. A number of the latter were sent to Fort Rupert to work in the coal mines. 197 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS By this time, there were, according to contemporary reports, some seven independent settlers in the vicinity of Victoria, three of whom had previously been in the company's service. Victoria itself was laid out in streets in 1852, though where the city now stands was still forest with only occasional spaces of cultivated ground. In addition to the fort, only twelve houses stood within the surveyed limits. At the end of 1853, it was estimated that, apart from seventeen thousand natives, there was on the island a total population of four hundred and fifty persons of all nationalities, three hundred of whom were divided between Victoria and Sooke, with one hundred and twenty-five at Nanaimo and the rest at Fort Rupert Up to the same date, nineteen thousand eight hundred and seven acres had been applied for, but of this no less than ten thousand one hundred and seventy- two acres had been claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company, and two thousand three hundred and seventy-four acres by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. At the beginning of 1854, according to Bancroft, not more than five hundred acres at the most were under cultivation on the island, and of this all but thirty acres at Sooke and ten acres at Metchosin were under the immediate management of the company. From the outset, open quarrels were incessant between the settlers and the company. The first and leading cause lay in the conditions under which 198 GRIEVANCES OF THE COLONISTS the colonists were placed upon the land, the onerous nature of which has been already indicated. The land itself, the more so as the company had appropriated the best of it, was not inviting. Fear of the Indians pressed constantly, and there was loud complaint over the lack of properly constituted courts of justice. The company's time- honoured method of barter was hateful and unjust. It was a grievance, too, that the island was not included in the reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States. Besides these matters, which were of general application, a multitude of individual woes filled the cup to overflowing. A single example will show the lengths to which the strife proceeded. Three miles distant from the fort, Captain Lang- ford, from whom Langford Plains and Langford Lake received their names, worked on the lands of the Puget Sound Company as one of four bailiffs. He had been a Kentish farmer, and for a time an officer of the British army, but he was induced to enlist in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, to open, as he supposed, a farm on Vancouver Island. On his arrival he found to his disappointment that he had bound himself to the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, and that the quarters allotted to him consisted of but two log huts, of a single room each—one for himself and his family, the other for his men. Langford was a distant relative of Blanshard, the first governor 199 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS of the colony, and he was not slow to complain. The colonial office was soon deluged with indictments of the Hudson's Bay Company and its officials, and though the statements of Langford do not appear to have received full credence in England, their matter is of interest as throwing light on the relations in general of the company with the settlers. Langford's bitterest grievance was that the colonial surveyor had informed him when applying for a certain tract that the land in question was already sold to Dallas, the son- in-law of Douglas. But apparently the land at the time had not been sold, and Langford was therefore mulcted of a prospective profit. He further complained that although he had applied to Douglas for an immediate inquiry into the matter, the erring official had been permitted to leave the colony for England without explanation. In addition, Langford had been hardly used in court in the matter of a libel which had been printed concerning him, and he inveighed against the fitness of David Cameron, a linen draper and brother-in-law to Douglas, who had been appointed the first chief-justice of the colony. The report of Douglas as governor on the subject of Langford's charges had at least the effect of eliciting an expression of confidence on the part of the home authorities in the various officials of the colony. That Langford's onslaught upon Cameron had not the sympathy of the entire community is 200 PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE shown by a document which was presented by a number of the leading proprietors of the island to the governor, in which a protest is entered against the petition requesting the annulment of his appointment. Some interesting particulars having an important bearing on the same feature in the history of the island appear in the minutes of evidence taken before a select committee of the British House of Commons which was appointed in 1853 to consider the state of the British possessions in North America then under the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company. One of the recommendations made by the committee after due deliberation was that the connection of the company with Vancouver Island should be terminated and that provision should be made for the ultimate extension of the colony over the adjoining mainland west of the Rocky Mountains. The report was dated July 31st, 1857, and the recommendations were given effect in the following year, a step considerably hastened by the discovery of gold on the Thompson and Fraser Rivers. It was alleged by the committee as the basis of its findings, that the population under the company's regime had decreased instead of increasing; that the price placed upon the land was much too high; that the company's monopoly of the trade of the country had stifled all competition ; that settlers having no money were compelled to barter with the 201 111 m SIR JAMES DOUGLAS company for goods at exorbitant prices; that no proper protection was afforded from the Indians, there being only one constable and no military force on the island; that there was no restriction on the sale of liquors; that no means were provided for transmitting money to England, or for banking or for the marketing of farm produce ; that the company had done nothing to civilize the Indians, though due credit was given to the humanity of its policy in this connection; that no survey of lands had been made except of those belonging to the company's employees; that the company was directly responsible for the slow progress of settlement ; that the company evaded the export of goods other than its own in its ships from England; that settlers had been in specified cases induced to come to Vancouver Island as servants under misrepresentations ; and that in general the powerful influence of the Hudson's Bay Company was in favour throughout of its own interests and opposed to those of free and independent land-holders. Added to this arraignment of social and political conditions in the island, was a mass of useful and interesting information concerning its climatic and natural resources. With regard to its future, the witnesses examined by the committee were with one accord sanguine, provided that a suitable form of government were granted and a favourable opportunity offered for the process of industrial development. 202 _J RICHARD BLANSHARD The history of the early years of settlement on Vancouver Island, apart from the above, had few features of interest. The first governor of the colony, Richard Blanshard, was appointed in 1849. It is difficult to discuss his tenure of office seriously. An independent governor was not a part of the scheme which the company had in view. The directorate had, in fact, suggested Douglas for the position; but the nomination was discretely withdrawn on the intimation of the prime minister that at least the first governor of the colony should represent the Crown. Blanshard was accordingly accepted with equanimity by the company, as an instrument which might be used for a time and cast aside. The company, with or without the governor, was master of the situation. Blanshard had been educated as a barrister, and had had some previous experience in colonial administration. He was ambitious, and he accepted the office at its apparent value, undoubtedly without exact knowledge of its nature. Under the terms of the grant of Vancouver Island, the company was required to pay the expenses of all civil and military establishments during peace. Beyond this, however, Blanshard seems to have had no definite understanding. A thousand acres of land had been promised him by the home government; the promise, however, was construed by Douglas as applying only to lands for the governor's temporary use while holding office. On arriving at Vic- 203 dlELiiii SIR JAMES DOUGLAS toria on March 10th, 1850, Blanshard read the proclamation of his appointment to an audience composed of the officers of the ships which had brought him and the servants and officials of the company; but having no quarters allotted to him at the fort he was obliged almost immediately to return on board his vessel. Thereafter, for some time, the seat of government moved with the exigencies of the ship which bore the governor. The island was coasted and Fort Rupert and other points of interest visited. At Beaver Harbour, the coal workings, which were then engaging the attention of the company, were inspected, the judgment of Blanshard being unfavourable as to their success. The condition of the miners and natives having been investigated, the governor returned to Victoria. Without salary, without allowance for expenses, without clerical assistance of any kind, without evidence of the promise of the land he was to receive, without official residence, without the sympathy or cooperation of the officials of the company with whom he was speedily in open antagonism, without even duties to perform beyond the settlement of disputes between the settlers and the company, one course only was open—to resign. Before leaving he nominated a provisional government of three, consisting of Douglas, Cooper and Tod, and September 1st, 1851, saw his departure from Vancouver Island. The experiment of an independent governor had been tried and had failed. 204 DOUGLAS APPOINTED GOVERNOR A more cruelly treated officer of his rank it would be hard to find in the history of British colonial institutions. James Douglas was appointed governor of Vancouver Island in the place of Blanshard. No one outside of the company was available; and there were indeed few interests other than those of the corporation to render outside representation advisable. Until population became more numerous and industry more diversified, the machinery of government was, in truth, seldom needed. At most it served but to symbolize the supreme authority of the Crown. Meanwhile, the autocratic rule which Douglas in his capacity of governor and chief factor in one was able to enforce, was on the whole well suited to the conditions. A man more competent it would have been impossible to find. His knowledge of the country was unrivalled, his control of the officials and servants of the company absolute, and his influence with the Indians, whose goodwill was essential, almost unlimited. The situation was anomalous: from many points of view it was indefensible. But the time to end the domination of the company was not yet come,—did not, in fact, arrive till the discovery of gold on the Fraser gave an entirely new aspect to government and affairs in British Columbia. 205 CHAPTER VII VANCOUVER ISLAND FROM 1851 until 1858 Douglas reigned as governor of Vancouver Island. He did indeed reign. He continued the council of advisers appointed by Blanshard, the name of Finlayson being added, but his position was none the less that of an almost undisputed sovereign. The elements which had proved so discordant under Blanshard were now in harmony. Crown and company were virtually one, both having their centre in the governor. If the union wore an ominous look, it had at least been proved that an independent governor was, under existing conditions, impossible. For the moment the monopoly was all triumphant. Colonization came to a standstill. Even the renewal of the grant of the island for a further term of five years was achieved in 1854 with little difficulty, notwithstanding the vigorous protests of the few settlers who still found a voice. Yet at the moment of its sturdiest growth the axe was already laid at the root of the tree. Apart from routine, only two incidents call for special mention during this period. The first of these was essentially antagonistic in idea to the supremacy of the company; and the second involved the immediate and utter ruin of the fur trade over a wide 207 I II m - SIR JAMES DOUGLAS area of the mainland. The events referred to were, respectively, the establishment of representative government in the colony, and the discovery of gold on the Fraser River. The present chapter will be divided between these very important developments. It was in 1856 that Vancouver Island took on for the first time the full status of a British colony. The commission issued to Blanshard had provided for the summoning of a representative assembly; but for seven years Douglas with his council alone made shift to provide the scanty legislation which was needed by a community without independent population. Though the Crown had granted him this privilege, it was by the Crown that the first doubts were thrown on its validity. In due course it occurred to the colonial office that the establishment of a legislature on Vancouver Island was necessary, if for no other purpose than to confirm what had already been performed without its aid. It was urged, as an additional reason for the step, that in 1859 the relations of the company with the Crown must undergo revision, and that the future administration of the colony would be more easily provided for if the experiment of government by a house of representatives had been already made. Douglas was accordingly instructed to arrange forthwith for the dividing of the country into electoral districts, with a view to the election of a legislature, in accordance with the terms of his 208 ORGANIZING A LEGISLATURE commission. Many practical suggestions as to the procedure to be followed and the nature of the constitution that would suit so small a community, were added by Mr. Labouchere, the colonial secretary of the day. Consternation was apparently the first emotion raised in the breast of the company's leader by the determination of the home authorities. " It is not without feelings of dismay," wrote Douglas in reply, " that I contemplate the nature and amount of labour and responsibility which will be imposed upon me in the process of carrying out the instructions conveyed in your dispatch. Possessing a very slender knowledge of legislation, without legal advice or intelligent assistance of any kind, I approach the subject with diffidence, feeling, however, all the encouragement which the kindly promised assistance and support of Her Majesty's government is calculated to inspire." Making a virtue of necessity, he summoned at once a special meeting of his council to consider the dubious problem that confronted him, the result being that it was resolved to divide the island into four electoral districts, returning seven members in all, the property qualification of members to be the ownership of freehold estate to the value of three hundred pounds or more, while that of the voters remained as fixed by the governor's commission—namely, twenty acres or more of freehold land. " There will be a difficulty in finding properly qualified repre- 209 5ll SIR JAMES DOUGLAS sentatives," wrote Douglas to Labouchere on the conclusion of these arrangements, " and I fear that our early attempts at legislation will make a sorry figure, though at all events they will have the effect you contemplate of removing all doubts as to the validity of our local enactments." The proclamation which gave effect to the above Was issued on June 16th, 1856. The four electoral districts into which the colony had been divided were—Victoria, to be represented by three members ; Esquimalt, to be represented by two; Nanaimo, to be represented by one ; and Sooke to be represented by one. Elections duly followed. In Victoria five candidates appeared ; but in the other constituencies, so few or indifferent were the electors, the seats went without a contest. The members of the first assembly were as follows:—J. D. Pemberton, Joseph Yates, and E. E. Langford for Victoria; Thomas Skinner and J. S. Helmcken for Esquimalt: John Muir for Sooke and John E. Kennedy for Nanaimo. The House thus chosen had no sooner met than it encountered a difficulty that threatened for a time to be insurmountable. "J. B. Helmcken has been elected Speaker of the House," wrote Douglas under date of August 20th, " but nothing further has been done in consequence of objections having been raised as to the validity of the election in one instance, and as to the property qualifications in two cases, making three out of the seven members against whom peti- 210 MEETING OF LEGISLATURE tions have been sent in, leaving only three members and the Speaker at liberty to act, and that number is insufficient to form a committee of inquiry. . . . One of the petitions is got up merely for party purposes, and if that were withdrawn there would be four members and the Speaker who might proceed to the affairs of the House. In the United States the practice is in such cases for the governor to grant certificates of qualification to a majority of the members, who then proceed to constitute the House, but I am not certain that such a course would be in harmony with the English law. However, if the House would appeal to me on the subject I would have recourse to that expedient." From a later despatch it appears that the governor was spared such summary action. Langford, the representative for Victoria, was the member lacking the necessary qualifications, and he was replaced at once by Joseph William Mackay unopposed. The legislature met for the first time on August 12th, 1856. The inaugural speech of the governor on that occasion is a noteworthy document. Apart from the illustration it offers of what Douglas conceived to be the status of the young colony, it throws a strong light on the various problems which beset the early years of the little community. After congratulating the council and House on the occasion, "an event fraught with consequences of the utmost importance to the present and future inhabitants, and remarkable as the first instance of 211 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS representative institutions being granted in the infancy of a British colony," the address proceeded : " The history and actual position of this colony are marked by many other remarkable circumstances. Called into existence by an Act of the supreme government, immediately after the discovery of gold in California, it has maintained an arduous and incessant struggle with the disorganizing effects on labour of that discovery. Remote from every other British settlement, with its commerce trammelled, and met by restrictive duties on every side, its trade and resources remain undeveloped. Self-supporting, and defraying all the expenses of its own government, it presents a striking contrast to every other colony in the British Empire, and like the native pines of its storm-beaten promontories, it has acquired a slow but hardy growth. Its future progress must, under Providence, in a great measure depend on the intelligence, industry and enterprise of its inhabitants, and upon the legislative wisdom of this assembly." The address paused at this point to refer to the aid and support which the executive power might in the future expect to derive from the "local experience and knowledge of the wishes of the people and the wants of the country," which the members possessed. It then resumed : " Gentlemen, I am happy to inform you that Her Majesty's government continues to express the most lively interest in the progress and welfare of this 212 FISCAL PROBLEMS colony. Negotiations are now pending with the government of the United States, which may probably terminate in an extension of the reciprocity treaty to Vancouver Island. To show the commercial advantages connected with that treaty I will just mention that an import duty of £30 is levied on every £100 worth of British produce which is now sent to San Francisco, or to any other American port; or, in other words, the British proprietor pays as a tax to the United States nearly the value of every third cargo of fish, timber, or coal which he sends to any American port. The reciprocity treaty utterly abolishes those fearful imposts, and establishes a system of free trade in the produce of British colonies. The effects of that measure in developing the trade and natural resources of the colony can, therefore, be hardly overestimated. The coal, the timber, and the productive fisheries of Vancouver's Island will assume a value before unknown; while every branch of trade will start into activity, and become the means of pouring wealth into the country. So unbounded is the reliance which I place in the enterprise and intelligence possessed by the people of this colony, and in the colony, and in the advantages of their geographical position, that with equal rights and a fair field I think they may enter into a successful competition with the people of any other country. The extension of the reciprocity treaty to this island once gained, the interests will become inseparably 213 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS connected with the principles of free trade, a system which I think it will be sound policy on our part to encourage. " Gentlemen, the colony has been again visited this year by a large party of northern Indians, and their presence has excited in our minds a not unreasonable degree of alarm. Through the blessing of God they have kept from committing acts of open violence, and been quiet and orderly in their deportment ; yet the presence of large bodies of armed savages, who have never felt the restraining influences of moral and religious training, and who are accustomed to follow the impulses of their own evil natures more than the dictation of reason or justice, gives rise to a feeling of insecurity which must exist as long as the colony remains without military protection. Her Majesty's government, ever alive to the dangers which beset the colony, have arranged with the lords commissioners of the Admiralty, that the President frigate should be sent to Vancouver's Island ; and the measure will, I have no doubt, be carried into effect without delay. I shall nevertheless continue to conciliate the goodwill of the native Indian tribes by treating them with justice and forbearance, and by rigidly protecting their civil and agrarian rights. Many cogent reasons of humanity and sound policy recommend that course to our attention ; and I shall, therefore, rely upon your support in carrying such measures into effect. We know, from our own experience, 214 FINANCE that the friendship of the natives is at all times useful, while it is no less certain that their enmity may become more disastrous than any other calamity to which the colony is directly exposed. "Gentlemen of the House of Assembly, according to the constitutional usage, with you must originate all money bills; it is therefore your special province to consider the ways and means of defraying the ordinary expenses of the government, either by levying a customs duty on imports, or by a system of direct taxation. The poverty of the country and the limited means of a population struggling against the pressure of numberless privations, must necessarily restrict the amount of taxation; it should, therefore, be our constant study to regulate the public expenditure according to the means of the country, and to live strictly within our income. The common error of running into speculative improvements entailing debts upon the colony, for a very uncertain advantage, should be carefully avoided. The demands upon the public revenue will, at present, chiefly arise from the improvement of the internal communications of the country, and providing for the education of the young, the erection of places for public worship, the defence of the country, and the administration of justice. " Gentlemen, I feel in all its force the responsibility now resting upon us. The interests and well being of thousands yet unborn may be affected by our decisions, and they will reverence or condemn 215 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS our acts according as they are found to influence, for good or for evil, the events of the future." With this exordium, the legislature proceeded to its duties. The opening session was almost wholly devoted to the consideration of ways and means. It would appear on the whole to have been no small problem to make ends meet in the young colony. In 1855, for example, the total public expenditures reached the sum of £4,107 2s. 3d., of which £1,388 5s. 5d. were spent on roads and bridges ; £683 18s. Id. on surveys; £1,362 17s. 5d. on the church, chaplain and parsonage at Victoria ; £100 on the administration of justice; £81 8s. 9d. on militia; £30 9s. 2d. on jail expenses; and £7 15s. lOd. on government premises. To meet this, an income of £334 17s. was derived from land sales, and the sum of £340 from the sale of licenses to deal in liquor, these being the sole local sources of revenue. The sum of £130 was voted to meet the expenses of the first House. This modest appropriation, it is of interest to note in the records, permitted the payment of £10 to the clerk of the House; £5 to the ser- geant-at-arms; £20 for fighting, heating and furnishing ; £50 for the copying of documents; £5 for stationery; while the remaining £40 were prudently withheld for current salaries. Apart from this incursion into finance, little of an original nature was attempted by the assembly. Of its acts of ratification, the most important was that by which the rules of the Supreme Court, as previ- 216 INFLUENCE OF THE COMPANY ously in force for the administration of justice in civil cases, were continued without alteration. This done, the House lapsed into inactivity. In reality there was nothing for it to do. It introduced no new element into the government of the colony. It was not even representative of anything but the all pervading interests of the company. Douglas, the governor, was the company's factor-in-chief. Work, Finlayson and Tod, who made up the council, were respectively chief factor, chief trader and ancient pensioner of the company. The seven members of the House were no less of the monopoly. Helmcken, the Speaker, was the company's staff doctor; Pem- berton was its surveyor-general; and Mackay was its clerk. Muir and Kennedy were retired servants. Yates was its beneficiary; and Skinner was an agent of the Puget Sound Company. Cameron, the chief- justice, was the brother-in-law of Douglas ; Anderson, the collector of duties, was a retired chief- trader. For the real history of the island, therefore, during the period of representative institutions as before, it is from the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company that enquiry must be made. The acts of Douglas as governor and his official despatches to the colonial office are well known; of Douglas as chief factor and the communications which he held with the London directorate—the hidden springs to which the outside show responded—we have but occasional glimpses or such stray particles of fact as may be gleaned by inference or from alien sources. 217 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Thus, without incident or variation, the government of Vancouver Island continued until 1859, when the end came of the second five years' term of the Hudson's Bay Company's rule. In truth, the administration of the colony, as apart from the company, had proved a matter of small difficulty. There was but one constable. As no means were provided for paying a recorder or other administrator of justice, the governor himself had acted in that capacity. In the place of sheriffs and a militia, a body of mounted police termed "voltigeurs" was organized from among the settlers and servants of the company. On only two occasions was a display of force found necessary. In December 1852, a shepherd at Christmas Hill was killed by two natives, one of whom fled to Cowichan and the other to Nanaimo. To allay the settlers' alarm, Douglas with a contingent borrowed from H.M.S. Thetis, then lying at Esquimalt, proceeded to the Saanich village, where after a characteristic parley the murderer was handed over. The expedition then passed to Nanaimo and secured the second culprit. At both places the natives were sternly admonished. On the return to Victoria the criminals were tried and executed. Some time later a white man was shot by an Indian at Cowichan, but the offender was again delivered up, after a demonstration as before, and was hanged in the presence of his people. Thus was the Indian taught to respect the white man's law. 218 Wis n THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD The disruption of this curious fabric was in the end as sudden as it was complete. No other agency, it may be safely said, than that which brought the result to pass, could have achieved it with the same unexpectedness and finality. That agency was the discovery of placer gold. The incident belongs to more than local history, the opening of the gold fields of British Columbia being among the most notable of those dazzling events which have fluttered from time to time the financial capitals of the world and opened new paths for the adventurous to sudden and marvellous wealth. As early as the regime of Blanshard, rumours of the finding of gold had reached Victoria from the Queen Charlotte Islands. More in alarm than gratification at the news, a brigantine had been despatched by the company to investigate. It discovered quartz but no placers. In the following year, however, expeditions from various quarters landed on the islands; and on January 14th, 1852, Douglas was able to report the definite discovery of gold on the western coast. It appeared strongly advisable to the governor at this juncture to prohibit foreigners from landing on the new gold fields. Several vessels, he pointed out to the colonial secretary, had sailed from the United States, and more were being outfitted on the California sea-board, the crews being prepared to overcome opposition by their numbers and the ease with which reinforcements of adventurers might be obtained from San 219 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS ill Francisco. Attention was also called to the hostile attitude of the Indians. The Admiralty in reply ordered H.M.S. Thetis to assert Her Majesty's sovereignty over the islands; but it was decided not to prohibit the vessels of foreign countries from landing men and stores there. In May of the same year, Douglas accordingly thought it advisable to report more fully on the matter. Seven American ships, he informed Earl Grey, with between forty and seventy men each, had arrived in Gold Harbour, four having returned after landing fifteen men and erecting a blockhouse. " It is very certain," he added, " that success will have the effect of attracting crowds of adventurers from the American settlements to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and it will be no easy task to eject them when firmly established." The admission of foreigners to the gold fields of British Columbia was from first to last, as will be seen, the cause of much disquietude to the governor. These and other representations bore fruit at the close of the year, when Douglas received a commission as lieutenant-governor of the Queen Charlotte Islands—"to meet the circumstances of the time." Power was by the same instrument granted him to issue licenses, on the express understanding that they did not give a title in the soil. He was requested also to forward the names of persons who might act as justices of the peace. Enclosed with the despatch which bore these orders were copies of 220 THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS letters which had been issued instructing the Admiralty to protect British property and interests from foreign violation and calling the attention of the United States government to the actions of its citizens on the Pacific. Douglas, on their receipt, at once drew up a proclamation with regard to the taking out of licenses, the conditions which he attached to the latter being similar to those enforced in New South Wales, the most important difference lying in the fact that the fee in the Queen Charlotte Islands was placed at ten instead of twenty shillings. In the excitement which followed these developments, a number of expeditions made haste to the islands. Five vessels were reported in Mitchell Harbour at one time ; and the hills were full of prospectors. The end, however, was disappointment. One quartz vein, seven inches in width and traceable for eight feet, contained in places twenty-five per cent, of gold; but the hope of loading vessels with the treasure was soon abandoned. From a pocket on Gold Harbour, Moresby Island, between $20,000 and $25,000 were taken (or were reported to have been taken) but more was probably spent in the mining of it than was finally recovered. About the same time Indians from the Skeena River brought in nuggets to the company's fort, but the several expeditions that were sent out to locate the sources met with failure. The whole movement died almost as suddenly as it began. 221 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS The flurry with regard to the Queen Charlotte Islands serves but as introductory episode in the history proper of the gold fields of British Columbia, These, as is well known to fame, lay on the mainland, in the beds of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, from whose golden sands millions of dollars worth of the precious metal was washed annually for many succeeding years. Exactly how, when, or where the finds were first made is uncertain, amid the mass of legend offering on the subject. Gold dust, according to one report, had been seen by the company in the possession of the natives at Kamloops as early asl852, though no suspicion was awakened at the time as to the wealth of the neighbourhood. Gold, according to a letter of Douglas written in 1860, was first discovered on the Thompson River by an Indian a short distance below Nicom- men. Quaffing from the stream, he saw a shining pebble: it proved to be gold. Finlayson mentions the discoveries of McLean, the officer in charge at Kamloops, as among the earliest incidents of the gold-mining epoch. According to Anderson, the first intimation that the company received of the existence of gold in the interior was in 1855, when some particles of the metal were found by a servant of the company who was idly washing a pannikin of gravel near Fort Colville. The result was the opening of diggings close by, which proved only moderately remunerative. Later, in a version of the story which accounts for the spread of the 222 if EARLY DISCOVERIES news, some Canadians went over from Colville to the Thompson and Fraser, found gold everywhere, were followed by others, who in turn sent the reports over Puget Sound to San Francisco. In less than a year after, twenty thousand miners were on their way to the Fraser. The first official mention of the discoveries was made by Douglas to the home government in a despatch dated April 16th, 1856. This had reference to the finds on the Upper Columbia. That they were not seriously regarded is shown by the fact that the subject was permitted to rest until July 1857. In the latter year, it appears, the Indians had expelled some parties of gold-seekers from this region, partly from a desire to retain the gold, and partly because they feared that the operations of the gold- diggers would prevent the salmon from ascending the river. Later in the same year, however, Douglas in a letter to Labouchere speaks of the Couteau mines, so named from the natives of the Thompson and Shushwap countries, as attracting attention, though up to October 6th, 1857, only three hundred ounces of gold had been exported through the agency of the company. Nevertheless, on the same date as his letter, Douglas issued a proclamation declaring all gold in its natural place of deposit to belong to the Crown and that persons might not "dig or disturb the soil in search of gold until authorized in that behalf by Her Majesty's colonial government." The authorization in question was to be ob- 22a SIR JAMES DOUGLAS tained by payment of a license of 10s. a month, Douglas excusing his action in the matter by the fact that he was invested with command over the district by the Hudson's Bay Company, and that he was the only representative of the Crown within reach. The cost of these licenses was raised to 21s. before the end of the following January. The immediate result of the policy of causing the miners to pay tribute in this manner was to bring them one and all to Victoria as the starting-point for the new diggings. Coming as they did from California by sea, Victoria was naturally the first point of call; had no license been required, however, they might have gone through direct to the Fraser. Though the effect upon a number was merely to cause a break in the journey, upon others, owing to transportation difficulties, a longer stay was necessitated. During the spring and summer months of 1858, the rush was extraordinary. Ocean steamers crowded with gold-seekers arrived almost daily. From a hamlet clustered about a Hudson's Bay trading-post, Victoria sprang suddenly into a city. No accurate record of arrivals was kept; but it has been estimated that between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand persons passed through its portals. Every trade, nationality and condition was represented in that throng. From the Oregon coast to San Francisco, men dropped the instruments of their calling, hastily sold what could most readily be converted into cash, left homes uncared for, and 224 if THE RUSH TO THE FRASER boarded the first nondescript carrier whose prow turned northward. Some who avoided the passage by sea followed the coast by land, or attempted to reach the goal through the mountain passes of the interior. The gambler and the parasite followed in their wake. California's population was seriously depleted ; San Francisco was threatened with bankruptcy. In Victoria the sound of the hammer was incessant day and night. Buildings to the number of two hundred and upward arose in six weeks. The land office was besieged before daylight. There was all but a food famine. Flour rose to $30.00 a barrel; ship biscuit was not to be had; lumber brought $100 a thousand feet; town lots sold at $1,000 per foot frontage. Victoria became immediately the most important shipping centre of the coast, and its docks were crowded with merchandise. Of the promiscuous population that continued to pour in, many remained in the city. Those in search of gold pressed on to the Fraser,—in canoes, in improvised sailing boats or in steamers, daunted by no dangers and enduring the severest hardships. Many were lost in the tide-rips, and of those that reached the great river thousands were doomed to disappointment. The Fraser begins to rise in June, and does not reach its ebb until the autumn. High water covers the bars and renders placer mining impossible. Some of the more indomitable pushed on at the risk of life to Hope and Yale, the head of navigation. The great majority, however, turned 225 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS their backs on British Columbia and repaired again to San Francisco. Those who remained met with their reward. When the Fraser fell, the harvest was rich. Some $543,000 in gold was shipped out in that year alone, and it is estimated that the total output was from $150,000 to $200,000 greater than that amount. The invasion of this wild and lawless multitude presented a serious problem to Douglas, badly equipped as he was for maintaining order and enforcing the authority of his government. On May 8th, 1858, he gives voice again in a despatch to the fear which had so beset him at the time of the gold discoveries on the Queen Charlotte Islands—the fear of the foreigner who knew not the company. He admits the openings for trade presented by the inrush, as well as the practical impossibility of stemming so fierce a tide; yet he cannot refrain, notwithstanding the peremptory mandate of Lytton that it was no part of British policy to exclude foreigners from the gold fields, from casting about for means of regulation and profit other than those that went hand in hand with a policy of unrestriction. One plan which he ventured to suggest as asserting the interest of the Crown at the same time that it assured a revenue to the company, involved an arrangement with the United States Pacific Mail Company whereby the Hudson's Bay Company would enjoy a monopoly of the trade on the Fraser River and receive a com- 226 VISIT TO THE MINES pensation of two dollars per capita for each passenger carried to the head of navigation, the steamers to accept no passengers but those who had paid for licenses from the government of Vancouver Island. The arrangement was to continue for one year. Lord Lytton, however, promptly disapproved of the conditions as too favourable to the company, and as a matter of fact, the arrangement was never more than a project within the mind. Shortly after the beginning of the influx Douglas made a trip in person to the mainland, ascending the Fraser to Forts Langley, Hope and Yale. At Langley a number of speculators had taken possession of the land and were staking lots for sale; unlicensed and contraband trading had also sprung up. These matters were speedily righted. At Fort Hope, the miners, prior to his arrival, had organized a form of government and had posted regulations. These were replaced by rules proclaimed in the name of the governor of Vancouver Island. An incident is related of this trip which brings into prominence the practical wisdom of the governor. Landing at Hill's Bar, he inquired concerning the presence of a British subject, with a view to the appointment of a justice of the peace. The one man indicated to him confessed to a lack of knowledge of the law, and recommended a versatile and well-known foreigner to the governor's attention. Impressed by the man's candour, Douglas declared 227 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS that if he knew the difference between right and wrong his qualifications were sufficient, and he was forthwith appointed to administer the law. In June, Douglas in a despatch to Lord Stanley gave a detailed account of this journey. " Evidence is obtained," he wrote, " of the existence of gold over a vast extent of country situated both north and south of the Fraser River, and the conviction is gradually forcing itself on my mind that not only the Fraser River and its tributary streams, but the whole country situated to the eastward of the Gulf of Georgia, as far north as Johnstone's Straits, is one continued bed of gold, of incalculable value and extent." In view of this, he proposed that the land be thrown open for settlement, and that it be surveyed and sold at a rate not to exceed 20s. an acre. He pointed out, at the same time, that compensation would have to be made to the Hudson's Bay Company for giving up their rights of exclusive trade. It was in reply to this communication that Douglas received intelligence of a decision on the part of the home government fraught with important consequences to himself and the country. Mention has been made before of the proceedings of that select committee of inquiry which placed so unfavourable a report regarding the Hudson's Bay Company before the British parliament of 1858. In Canada a similar investigation had been made with a like result. This and the discovery of gold on the 228 THE MAINLAND COLONY Fraser River had convinced the government of the need of radical change, west as well as east of the Rockies. On August 2nd, 1858, accordingly, an Act was passed providing for the government of the mainland of British America, from the 49th parallel northward to the Naas and the Finlay, and from the crest of the Rocky Mountains westward to the sea, including the Queen Charlotte and adjacent islands with the exception of Vancouver Island. One month later, the license of exclusive trade granted to the Hudson's Bay Company for twenty- one years from 1838, in so far as it covered the territory above defined, was revoked, the government re-purchasing the company's rights on Vancouver Island for £57,500. Of British Columbia (for by that name it was decided that the new colony on the mainland should be known) it was proposed that Douglas should be governor, the office to be held in conjunction with his present post in Vancouver Island. The condition was added that he should sever all connection with the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Companies. The additional salary offered was at first £1,000. Douglas expressed appreciation of the honour and accepted the conditions. "With the consent of the Hudson's Bay Company," he wrote, " I place my humble services unhesitatingly at the disposal of Her Majesty's government, and I will take early measures for withdrawing from the company and disposing of my Puget Sound stock, trusting that the allowance 229 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS as to salary from Her Majesty's government will be adequate to my support in a manner worthy of the position I am called upon to fill." The allowance, in Douglas's opinion, ought to have been £5,000, his fortune having been impaired by his almost unrequited tenure of office in Vancouver Island. The colonial secretary, however, did not feel justified in assigning a larger sum than £1,800 at the time, though it was intimated that an increase derived from local funds would not be opposed if the revenue should warrant it. Thus ended the long connection of the famous chief factor and the company. Thus also died the exclusive rights of the great monopoly in the territory west of the Rocky Mountains. Douglas belongs henceforth to the public life of the country, and to that alone; while the company takes its place in the ranks of private trading enterprises, still powerful, and with a unique part still to play in the upbuilding of the country, but on no other basis than that of equal privilege. 230 iu CHAPTER VIII THE TWO COLONIES IN an extended series of despatches addressed to Douglas, bearing date July and August 1858, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the colonial secretary, set forth, amid a wealth of comment, the principles by which, under the watchful tutelage of the home government, the early steps of the province of British Columbia were to be guided. These formed at once the constitution and the Magna Charta of the new community. They occupy from many points of view a remarkable place in the history of the colonial institutions of Great Britain. The main feature of the plan was that it placed the entire functions both of government and legislation in the hands of Douglas. A check was indeed provided in the form of a council, which the governor was recommended to select as soon as possible, and to which foreigners as well as British subjects might be eligible. It was also declared with emphasis that the colony was expected to adopt representative institutions at the earliest moment practicable. But the effect of these provisions was less real than apparent. The council was purely advisory ; and the remoteness of the time when the chaotic population of the mainland might be .capable of political organization served but to 231 Wm SIR JAMES DOUGLAS emphasize the extraordinary powers that were entrusted meanwhile to the governor. Ways and means were perhaps the second matter to receive attention. It was thought that the exceptional resources of the country, including as they did not only fertile lands (the leading element of success, as Great Britain held, in all colonial settlements), a magnificent system of harbours and waterways, and that wealth in precious mineral which was even now attracting immigrants on so unprecedented a scale, would soon provide a revenue. Moderate duties on beer, wine, spirits, and the other articles usually subject to such taxation, as well as the sale of lands,—especially town lots for which high prices might be demanded,—were regarded at the outset as preferable to any system of mining licenses. The latter, however, were not forbidden, the colonial secretary contenting himself with a reference to the experience of Australia, which had not been happy in this method of applying the principles of direct taxation. Other provisions were of a miscellaneous character. The establishment of a seaport town and of a seat of government were suggested. It was promised that a party of Royal Engineers would be sent from England to survey lands for settlement (the disposal of which should be by gradual process), to open roads and to choose sites for the cities above mentioned. An experienced officer was to be furnished to assist in the formation of an adequate police 232 STATUS OF HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY force. A collector of customs and a judge were also promised. Arrangements for the transmission of mails via Panama and the levying of postage were authorized. In general, it was provided that the country in various directions should be developed, as soon as full reports concerning its resources could be prepared by the governor or his assistants. Every care was enjoined upon the governor not to antagonize or irritate the mixed population now swarming into the country. Especially was there to be no jealousy of or discrimination against foreigners, who were to be convinced in every legitimate way that their interests would be protected by the government. Kindness towards the Indians was commanded. Other instructions had reference to the discouragement of speculation, the granting of naturalization, and the making of appointments with a view both to efficiency and the satisfaction of local feeling. The bearing of the new arrangement upon the status of the Hudson's Bay Company, hitherto sole overlord of the whole vast region, had been sufficiently indicated by the measure which revoked the special privileges granted in 1838, 1849, and 1854. Nevertheless it was thought advisable, in view of the recent past, to remind the governor with some particularity that at no time had these privileges gone further than to guarantee exclusive trade with the Indians of the Fraser River. Even before the establishment of the colony, the company, it was 233 I SIR JAMES DOUGLAS pointed out, had no right to exclude strangers; it had no rights of government or of occupation of the soil; it had no right to prevent or interfere with any kind of trading, except with the Indians alone. The British government, however, went even further in its watchfulness than this explicit definition. " You will pardon me if I enjoin on you as imperative," wrote the colonial secretary to Douglas, " the most diligent care that in the sales of land there should not be the slightest cause to impute a desire to show favour to the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. Parliament will watch with jealousy every proceeding connected with such sales ; and I shall rely upon you to take every precaution which not only impartial probity but deliberate prudence can suggest, that there shall be no handle given for a charge, I will not say of favour, but of indifference or apathy to the various kinds of land-jobbing, either to benefit favoured individuals or to cheat the land revenue, which are of so frequent occurrence at the outset of colonization, and which it is the duty of Her Majesty's government, so far as lies in them, to repress." The man upon whom the weight of these important and manifold counsels was laid had at least the entire confidence of the home government. " I cannot conclude," wrote the colonial secretary at the close of one of his despatches, " without a cordial expression of my sympathy in the difficulties you have encountered and of my 234 POWERS OF DOUGLAS sense of the ability, the readiness of resource, the wise and manly temper of conciliation which you have so signally displayed; and I doubt not that you will continue to show the same vigour and discretion in its exercise; and you may rely with confidence upon whatever support and aid Her Majesty's government can afford you." And again with more particular reference to the future and to the responsibilities entrusted to him in this extraordinary manner: "These powers are indeed of very serious and unusual extent, but Her Majesty's government fully rely on your moderation and discretion. You are aware that they have only been granted on account of the very unusual circumstances which have called into being the colony committed to your charge, and which may for some time continue to characterize it. To use them, except for the most necessary purpose, would be, in truth, to abuse them greatly. They are required for the maintenance of British law and British habits of order, and for regulating the special questions to which the conditions of employment and of the population may give birth." *'*$« To attempt, within ordinary limits, to describe the somewhat elastic manner in which application was made of the comprehensive scheme outlined above, is to be plunged at once into a mass of incident, each phase of which has both its own and its reflected importance, but the heterogeneous 235 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS nature of which renders the topical method difficult The government of which Douglas formed the embodiment was in effect a means by which difficulties might be met by competent authority as they arose. It was not expected to attain at once to system, where even precedent had to be created. For this reason it will be well to follow somewhat closely for a time the movements of the governor himself as he proceeded to the execution of his difficult task. But first a word is needed as to the men and the material which were placed at his disposal, and the general nature of the problem involved in the first attempt at government in British Columbia. To the command of the Royal Engineers, the promise of which had been the most stirring note of cheer in the despatches of the home government and a detachment of which was on its way to British Columbia within a few weeks, Colonel Richard Clement Moody had been appointed. He bore, in addition, the title of chief commissioner of lands and works, with a latent commission as lieutenant-governor of the colony, in case of the incapacity or absence of Douglas. That there might be no misunderstanding as to the nature of his office and its relation to that of the governor, his instructions were to an unusual degree explicit. The governor, it was explained, was the supreme authority in the colony and his orders were to prevail as to the spots at which all surveys and other public works should be carried out. At the same time the duties 236 THE ROYAL ENGINEERS of the commissioner were to be regarded as special and not to be interfered with except under circumstances of the greatest gravity. The raising of a revenue from land sales being of immediate importance, the commissioner was urged to afford the governor, without shackling the latter's discretion, the benefit of his talents and experience in ensuring this paramount object. Full reports were to be made from time to time of the various resources of the colony—its mines, its fisheries, the qualities of its coal, the nature of its soil, and its maritime approaches—with a view to the immediate development of the social and industrial welfare of the community. With regard to the military employment of his force, the utmost discretion was to be used. "No soldiers," wrote the colonial secretary to Moody, "are likely to be more popular then the Royal Engineers, partly, let me hope, from their military discipline and good conduct, and partly from the civil nature of their duties in clearing the headway for civilization. Thus, if not ostentatiously setting forth its purely military character, the force at your command will, nevertheless, when the occasion may need its demonstration, do its duty as soldiers no less than as surveyors Wherever England extends her sceptre, there as against the foreign enemy she pledges the defence of her sword. It seems meanwhile " he continued, " a good augury of the cooperation of the colonists in any measure demanding public spirit, that the miners themselves 237 \ - iff!! ■V SIR JAMES DOUGLAS are constructing a road, of which seven miles are completed, and that they have organized themselves into bands under leaders, thus recognizing discipline as the element of success in all combined undertakings. Each miner thus employed deposits with the governor $25 as security for good conduct. I need not add that a governor who could at once inspire confidence and animate exertion must have many high qualities which will ensure your esteem and add to the satisfaction with which you will cooperate with his efforts." The first contingent of the force, consisting of twenty non-commissioned officers and men, left England by the steamer La Plata on September 2nd, arriving at Victoria in November. A second followed soon. In a third party, which sailed by the clipper-ship Thames City around the Horn, were included three officers, a staff assistant surgeon, one hundred and eighteen non-commissioned officers and men, together with thirty-one women and thirty- four children, the whole in charge of Captain R. H. Luard. Moody arrived in December. The La Plata among its despatches to Douglas bore three of special importance: the first including his commission as governor of British Columbia; a second empowering him to make provision for the administration of justice; and a third informing him of the revocation of the charter to the Hudson's Bay Company of 1838 with reference to territory on the mainland west of the Rocky Mountains. 238 MATTHEW BA1LLIE BEGBIE Another appointment of the time, fraught with even greater importance to the colony, was that of Matthew Baillie Begbie as judge of British Columbia. He arrived in November 1858. Though the office, strictly speaking, was judicial, he was instructed for the present to lend his assistance in the framing of laws and other legal business more properly pertaining to the functions of an attorney- general, the first incumbent of that office, Mr. G. H. Carey, not being appointed until some time later. Until his death in 1894, Begbie continued from sheer force of character as well as of intellect to fill a unique and commanding place in the affairs of British Columbia. Born in Edinburgh in 1819, and educated at Cambridge and Lincoln's Inn, he succeeded to the office of chief-justice of the united colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island in 1866, Needham, the chief-justice of the latter, who had followed Cameron in 1858, having been transferred to Trinidad. To Begbie, perhaps more than any other man, the colony owed the healthful ordinances, the liberal provisions of government, and the unbroken reign of peace and order which it enjoyed almost from the moment of its birth. There will be occasion on a later page to notice at least one example of the practical statesmanship of this remarkable man. W. Wymond Hanley was appointed collector of customs and Chartres Brew, who had served with distinction in the Crimea, chief of the con- 239 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS stabulary. Travaillot and Hicks were nominated assistant commissioners of Crown lands at Thompson River and Yale, and W. H. Bevis, revenue officer at Langley. The colonial secretary was W. A. G. Young, and the treasurer, W. D. Gosset. James D. Pemberton, the surveyor-general of Vancouver Island, acted for a time in the same capacity in British Columbia, with B. W. Pearse as his first assistant. By October 27th, 1858, it may be remarked, the governor was able to forward a report from Pemberton on the important subject of the disposal of Crown lands which included a proposal to use the 49th parallel as a base in all surveys, with a suggestion that mineral lands should be held at £1 per acre, town sites according to the value of location, and agricultural lands at considerably less. On the subject of officers, in general, Douglas was under instructions to make his selections, where possible, in England, it being regarded as of "great importance to the general social welfare and dignity of the colony that gentlemen should be encouraged to come from this kingdom, not as mere adventurers seeking employment but in the hope of obtaining professional occupations for which they are calculated; such for instance as stipendiary magistrates, or gold commissioners." A warning was again added against favouritism to the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, and it was again declared that for the avoidance of all appearance of 240 EARLY APPOINTMENTS local preference "careful appointments should be made in England." Up to June 30th, 1859, Douglas had recommended the following officers, among others, in British Columbia, nearly every name in the list having since passed into the history of the community: W. R. Spalding, as stipendiary magistrate and justice of the peace at Queenborough; Peter O'Reilly, Thomas Elwyn and H. M. Ball to the same offices at Langley, Lillooet and Lytton, respectively; Charles S. Nicoll, to be high sheriff at Port Douglas; E. H. Sanders, as assistant gold commissioner at Fort Yale; Charles Good, as chief clerk in the colonial secretary's office; John Cooper, as chief clerk of the treasury; W. H. McCrea, as clerk in the Custom House; A. I. Bushby, to be registrar of the Supreme Court; Charles Wylde, as revenue officer at Langley. In addition there were resident at New Westminster, W. D. Gosset, treasurer; F. G. Claudet, assayer; and C. A. Bacon, melter. In later years the number of applicants for office coming from Great Britain, often with influential letters of introduction, was a source of no small embarrassment to Douglas. It was indeed an extraordinary community to which the offices of government were now to be extended. Scattered along the reaches of the lower Fraser or clambering in widely scattered bands over the mountainous divides in search of further fields, not less than thirty thousand miners had rushed into the district,—of a class, the most un- 241 -*P i SIR JAMES DOUGLAS bridled in the world. Of these, however, scarcely more than four thousand were left at the end of the summer season, the difficulties of the high water and of the terrific rapids and canyons of the Fraser having driven out the rest. Another influx occurred in October, but it was of small account compared with the first. The bars began a few miles above Hope, and on the thirteen which lay between that point and Yale two or three thousand men were digging in the sands. At Yale there was another seven or eight hundred. Tents and log huts provided shelter. Provisions, once the first rush was over, were fairly abundant at these lower points. Bacon, salmon, bread, tea and coffee formed the staple diet; and a good meal could be bought for one dollar. Milk and butter were unknown. High spirits prevailed save among the few whom the unaccustomed hardships and deprivations were slowly grinding to death. On the whole, though the camps held many a wild and abandoned character, acts of lawlessness were singularly infrequent; but the mass was as a smouldering fire ready to burst into a flame of revolt on provocation of its untamed sense of justice. Above Yale a different story was told. Ingress barred by the tremendous " lower big canyon" and "upper big canyon" of the Fraser, and by the increasing savagery of the natives, only the most reckless and determined had forced their way thither. Still higher, on the Thompson, a few who had crossed from the Upper Columbia by the old 242 SECOND VISIT TO THE FRASER trail of the Hudson's Bay Company, were fighting slow starvation in the absence of stores and the possibility of bringing in supplies. With the exception of the scattered and demoralized fur traders and the outraged and exasperated Indians, such in 1858 was the colony of British Columbia. During his tenure of the double office, Douglas was of necessity an itinerant governor of the mainland colony, and in the record of his several visits, set forth in ample detail in the reports which he forwarded to the colonial office, a large part of the early history of British Columbia is to be read. The first of these visits has been already mentioned. The second was undertaken in the September following his appointment as governor. A force of marines from H.M.S. Satellite, then acting as guard ship in British Columbia waters, made ready to accompany him, in view of recent troubles with the Indians; it does not appear, however, that the contingent was made use of. The first place of call was Fort Hope, the station at which the detachment of engineers not yet arrived were to be set at work, and from which a road to Yale was urgently needed. Some three thousand miners and traders were huddled at the time about the stockade in tents or huts. Provisions were scarce and dear, pork and flour selling at one dollar a pound. Bad blood between the Indians and the whites had been aroused, the improper sale of liquor being probably the chief cause. Realizing the impossibility of stamping out 243 ii , mm %. \ SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the traffic among the miners, Douglas determined to turn it to the account of revenue by legalizing it at the rate of $600 for a license. For selling liquor to the natives the penalty was placed at $25 to $100. Town lots were largely demanded and no difficulty was experienced in disposing of a large number under leases terminable at the pleasure of the Crown, held at a monthly rental of £4 8s. payable in advance on the understanding that the holder would be allowed a pre-emption right of purchase when the land was sold, in which case the rent would count as part of the purchase money. Aliens might hold lands for three years, after which they must become naturalized; failing, they would either forfeit their holdings or be forced to convey them to British subjects. The organization of a police force proved impracticable owing to the high wages prevailing, the earnings of the miners in the neighbourhood, which fixed the standard, ranging from £1 to £5 a day. So, too, the idea of a courthouse and jail was abandoned for lack of the sum of £1,000 which the erection would have required. A justice of the peace and revenue officer, however, was appointed, and a chief constable sworn in. Mr. George Pearkes, the Crown solicitor for Vancouver Island, who accompanied Douglas, Begbie not yet having arrived, sat at the head of a commission which brought various offenders to justice; among the latter a miner named Eaton who had murdered a comrade was sentenced to transportation for life. 244 INAUGURATION CEREMONIES The enforcement of such penalties in the absence of any penal settlement and owing to the heavy expense of deportation was another of the difficulties of Douglas. From Hope the governor journeyed to Yale, visiting the different encampments by the way. Here grants of land were made on the same conditions as at Hope, a justice of the peace appointed, together with a chief constable at $150 per month. A police magistrate was also appointed at Lower Fountainville. The governor returned on September 26th, having by his speeches and reforms done much to create content among the miners and to allay the irritation of the natives. On November 17th an imposing party of officials left Victoria for the headquarters of the new colony. The governor was in command, with Rear-Admiral Baynes, Cameron, the chief-justice of Vancouver Island, and Begbie, the judge of British Columbia, who with several officers of the Royal Engineers, had now arrived ; and their mission was the formal launching of the colony of British Columbia. They sailed in H.M.S Satellite, with the Hudson's Bay Company's Otter in attendance. Within the mouth of the Fraser, the Beaver and the Recovery received the party, which was landed at new Fort Langley. The day of the ceremonial broke dark and lowering. A guard of honour received His Excellency amid the firing of a salute; and in the presence of about one hundred persons assembled in a large room of the fort, the 245 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS weather rendering a meeting in the open impossible, the oaths of office were taken, first by Begbie as judge, and afterwards by Douglas as governor. Proclamation was made of the Act establishing the colony; of an instrument indemnifying the officers of the government from any irregularities that might have been committed during the interval prior to the establishment of the Act; declaring English law as the law of the colony; and revoking the exclusive privileges of the Hudson's Bay Company. The governor did not leave the fort until the following day, when a salute of fourteen guns pealed forth in his honour. It was expected that New Langley, or, as it was now called, Derby, where these simple rites had taken place, would form the permanent capital of the colony, and with that in view a survey of the town was made and a sale of lots held soon after the departure of the governor. The upset price was placed at $100, but so spirited was the bidding that many of the lots brought from $200 to $400, and some of choice locations as high as $750 each. In all, the sum of $68,000 was realized from the sale of about four hundred lots. Work was begun upon a barracks for the Engineers, and tenders were invited for a court-house, a jail, a church and a parsonage. A proclamation to authorize the levying of customs duties was issued. In the midst of these and other preparations, however, Colonel Moody with his second in command, Captain J. M. 246 NEW WESTMINSTER Grant, arrived, and their report, on military and other grounds, was unfavourable to Langley. It is possible that the close proximity of a large block of lands held in reserve by the Hudson's Bay Company may have had something to do with the original choice. After a careful survey of the river, the site of New Westminster, some distance lower down and on the opposite bank, was approved, and the purchasers of lots at Langley allowed to exchange them for locations in the new town. A dispute arose as to the naming of the capital, Moody proposing Queenborough, Douglas Queensborough, and Young objecting to both as a paraphrase of Victoria. The difficulty was referred for settlement to the queen who conferred on the place the title by which it has since been known. In laying out the town, a proposal that one-quarter should be reserved for purchasers in England and other colonies was vetoed by the colonial secretary as a stimulus to speculation by non-residents. In the following June a satisfactory sale of lots took place at New Westminster, three hundred and ten being sold for $89,000. The largest sum paid for a single lot was $1,925. In the meantime tenders for various public buildings had been received, and "Sapper- ton," the quarter chosen for the accomodation of the Engineers, was already rising in a spot notable for its romantic beauty. Prior to this and immediately upon his arrival in the colony, Colonel Moody and the Engineers had 247 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS rendered prompt and excellent service in a matter of a wholly different nature. This was the affair of Hill's Bar, the richest and most populous camp on the river, and the headquarters for whatever discontent the restrictions of British law and government had created in the breasts of the foreign miners. Beginning in a quarrel of rival magistrates, the matter was fast assuming the appearance of an armed collision between the Yale and Hill's Bar camps, the latter under the leadership of one McGowan, a notorious ex-judge of California, now a fugitive from the vigilance committee of San Francisco. Moody in response to a despatch threw forward a company of Engineers to Hope, while a hundred marines and blue-jackets from the Plumper and the Satellite were landed at Langley. With Begbie and Lieutenant Mayne of the Plumper alone, Moody himself went on to Yale, with the object of investigating in person the causes and true proportions of the disturbance. The first church service in Yale was held by Moody during this visit. An unprovoked assault by McGowan during his stay confirmed the opinion that occasion alone was wanting for the whole community of miners to break into open insubordination. Under cover of night, accordingly, the Engineers were ordered up to Yale and the marines set in motion at Langley. The vigour and celerity of the demonstration had the desired effect. Apologies were tendered by McGowan and the incipient dissatisfaction was 243 ROADS checked before it had time to gather. After a further outrage McGowan fled the country. Though not devoid of travesty, the incident was of wholesome effect upon the scattered and irresponsible community as showing at least the energy and power of the government and its determination to enforce good order. Even prior to the coming of the Royal Engineers and the establishment of the colony, the governor had launched his famous undertaking of opening up the country by means of roads, for which, if for no other achievement, his administration merits the supreme praise of efficiency. Here, as in so many cases, Douglas's long and thorough training in the needs and methods of the fur trade stood the colony in good stead. With Victoria as centre many miles of excellent roadway had been built in the neighbouring districts of Vancouver Island. When, therefore, on the discovery of gold on the Fraser, the need of roads became the problem of the hour, no lack of official will or understanding had to be overcome. How this need was met in the earliest instance has been already hinted at in the words of the colonial secretary to Moody. As an illustration of the resourcefulness of Douglas and his complete command of those rebellious forces which at the time were all he had at his disposal—forces which in less trained or skilful hands might have run only in disorganized or harmful channels—the 249 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS building of the first trail to the Fraser diggings is of more than passing interest. To the miners who had braved successfully the dangers of the sea passage from California, there still remained to surmount the swift and treacherous current of the Fraser, narrowed into a torrent above Yale. Monopoly was soon to lay an added tribute on the country's development, the foreign owners of the steamboats plying on the lower river having joined to raise the cost of transport from £5 to £14 a ton, a charge that brought the inhabitants above to the verge of starvation. By the power of withholding the privilege of registration, however, this evil was in time corrected, and the obstacles against which Douglas fought in the present instance were those of nature alone. From Yale, no other avenue was open to the mines which lay beyond, than the rough and precipitous footpath of the river's edge, where, on men's backs to and fro over the cliff, the food and tools of the miners had perforce to be conveyed. How to transport supplies to the front around these difficulties became at once the all-important question. To some returning miners a route from Anderson Lake to Lillooet, thence by Harrison Lake and river to the Fraser, was shown by the Indians. The distance was seventy miles, over a generally level country. There were five hundred miners at Victoria on their way to the diggings, restless and idle men through the lack of easy transport. With instant 250 N THE TRAIL TO THE DIGGINGS appreciation of the situation, Douglas adopted the following plan for the construction of a pack road by the route described. In consideration of a deposit of $25 and an agreement to work upon the trail until it was finished, the Hudson's Bay Company at Victoria agreed to transport the miners to the point of commencement on Harrison River, feed them during the work, and at the end return the value of their deposit in supplies at Victoria prices. The combination of credit and cooperation involved in the plan had been suggested by the miners themselves and at once engaged their support. The work was speedily completed, and at the end the men received their money back, their transportation being reckoned a fair return for their labour, while the company in addition to the temporary use of the money deposited was left with a toll road of infinitely greater value than the transportation and provisions it had cost. Some disagreement arose as to the point at which the supplies covenanted by the company should be delivered, the men holding that the upper end of the trail had been implied while the company declared for the lower. This at the time was an issue of some importance, beans which cost lj cents a pound at Victoria being worth 5 cents on the lower Fraser and $1.00 at the upper end of the new road. The dispute was ended by a compromise, the goods being delivered in the middle. The home government read a somewhat exalted lesson from this 251 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS achievement, as Douglas was often to be reminded. If the settlers would combine so readily in the construction of a road, united effort it was thought might safely be reckoned upon in the formation of a police, the establishment of law, the collection of revenue, and in the other efforts that might be necessary to make life secure and the community i prosperous. As it proved, this notable feat was but the pre- i lude of a general plan of road building which under j the existing conditions might justly be termed colossal. Roads followed the development of the j country everywhere; no difficulty or cost of con- i struction was permitted to stand in the way once i the need was thoroughly demonstrated. A wagon road from the Harrison to the Upper Fraser, an enlargement in part of the first pack road, was built in stages by the Royal Engineers in the two years following their arrival. " The construction of the Harrison or Lillooet road," wrote Douglas in 1861, " has been the great source of expenditure this season, that work having cost the colony nearly £14,000. Large as the outlay may appear it very inadequately represents the value of this important public work which has removed the difficulty of access and the great impediment to the development of the mineral regions of British Columbia." Hope and Similkameen were also connected by a road surveyed and built by Mr. E. Dewdney (afterwards minister of the interior for Canada and 252 THE WAGON ROAD TO CARIBOO still later lieutenant-governor of British Columbia), in conjunction with Mr. Walter Moberley, C.E. This road, as subsequently extended and known as the Dewdney trail, passed through the southern interior as far as Fort Steele in East Kootenay, and formed for many years a well-used route of travel. Every season saw the completion of several important reaches in these and other links of the system which Douglas devised, all in accordance with a comprehensive plan. But the crowning work of the series was the completion of the great wagon road to Cariboo. From Yale along the rocky canyons and defiles of the Fraser, it wound past Lytton and the Thompson by way of Ashcroft and the Bonaparte, joining the road from Lillooet at Clinton, and forming with other units of the plan a mighty artery of travel deep into the heart of the gold country. Even by present standards it was no mean feat of engineering. It opened a region of unexpected richness for agriculture: how rich in gold it was to prove will be referred to further on. It would seem that even larger plans than these had crossed the mind of Douglas. The trail from Hope to Kootenay, in his ambitious vision, might one day cross the Rockies, meeting at Edmonton a similar road built westward from the Canadas, the two to form a single great highway across the continent by which immigrants from the eastern colonies might enter the country,—for Douglas looked rather to Canada than to England for the 253 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS replenishing of the Pacific settlements. The dream was realized more fully than even Douglas would have dared to hope when, within twenty years of his own achievements, an army of men were at work upon the mountain section of the Canadian Pacific Railway. With the building of the system of communications of which the end was the opening up of Cariboo, the work of the Royal Engineers was finished. How large a part they had played in the early history of the colony may have been surmised from the few references given above that show them in the forefront of the colony's early development. Some feeling against their employment and the expense thereby incurred had arisen, and in 1863 it was deemed advisable that they should disband. Colonel Moody and some twenty- five of the force returned to England under the terms of their original agreement; the rest received grants of land and became permanent residents of the country. In the record of official visits and reports that throw a light upon the early history of the colony, mention should be made of a notable journey taken by Mr. Justice Begbie in the spring of 1859. Accompanied by Nicoll, high sheriff of British Columbia, and by Bushby, as assize clerk and registrar, he proceeded by way of the Fountains to the Upper Fraser, returning by the Lillooet route to Langley. The points which chiefly impressed the 254 1 MATTHEW BAILLIE BEGBIE judge were, the ready submission of the foreign population to the will of the executive; the preponderance of the Californian element in the population; the richness, both auriferous and agricultural, of the country; the need of fixity of tenure for the promotion of agriculture; and the total absence of means of communication, rendering industrial occupations of whatever sort, with the single exception of gold-digging, practically impossible. More important, however, than his observations upon the condition of the young colony, Begbie established on this visit that character for stern justice and utter fearlessness, which left a lasting imprint on the progress of British Columbia. His administration of the law amongst those lawless multitudes had all the force and directness of the vigilance committee, without its passion. A lawyer to the core, he could do right in spite of law. He made himself the guardian rather than the judge of British Columbia, and he accomplished this result by his unflinching resolve that crime of no degree should go unpunished. No region in all that wild and inaccessible territory was too remote for the strong and searching arm of his justice, and the wrong done to an Indian or a Chinaman met with as prompt and sure requital as that done to a white man. With the knowledge gained in a few months' time that in the hands of Begbie justice was swift as it was inflexible, the battle of law and order 255 mm SIR JAMES DOUGLAS was already won, and the influence of the judge throughout the colony became greater perhaps than that of any other man. It will be necessary, too, before leaving this personal chronicle, to notice the visit which Douglas paid to the mainland colony in the autumn of 1859. The tour included New Westminster, Langley, Douglas, Hope, and Yale, and was extended through the passes of the Fraser to Spuzzum and the mining districts west of that locality. There had been a decline in the number of miners since the previous year, and the governor estimated the entire white population of the colony at not more than six thousand men. The absence of wives and children was deplored. At the time, the exports of gold from British Columbia were valued at £14,000 monthly, but the estimate did not include the large amount remaining in the hands of the miners. No schools had yet been established. With regard to the importance of agriculture as a factor making for stability and permanence, the governor's views were pressed as follows: "The colony is yet destitute of one highly important element: it has no farming class, the population being almost entirely composed of miners and merchants. The attention of the government has been very earnestly directed to the means of providing for that want by the encouragement of agricultural settlers, a class that must eventually form the basis of the population, cultivate and improve the face of the country, and 256 POLICY OF THE GOVERNOR render it a fit habitation for civilized man. The miner is at best a producer, and leaves behind him no traces but those of desolation; the merchant is allured by the hope of gain; but the durable prosperity and substantial wealth of states is, no doubt, derived from the cultivation of the soil. Without the farmer's aid British Columbia must ever remain a desert—be drained of its wealth, and dependent on other countries for daily food." The report also referred to the road-building operations of the moment in the following terms which convey very clearly the views of Douglas on the subject of his greatest work: " The great object of opening roads from the sea-coast into the interior of the country, and from New Westminster to Burrard's Inlet and Pitt River, continues to claim a large share of my attention. The labour involved in these works is enormous; but so essential are they as a means of settling and developing the resources of the country, that their importance can hardly be over-rated;and I, therefore, feel it incumbent on me to strain every nerve in forwarding the progress of undertakings so manifestly conducive to the prosperity of the colony, and which, at the same time, cannot fail, ere long, to produce a large increase in the public revenue. We hope to complete the last section of a pack road leading, by the left bank of the Fraser, from Derby to Lytton, a distance of one hundred and seventy miles, on or before February 1st next." 257 II mm SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Inseparably associated with the early progress of the colony, and especially with those great undertakings to which reference has just been made— great both from their magnitude, the expenditures which they entailed, and the necessities which they met—was the vexing problem of finance. Here as on other points that will come in due course to be noted the governor and the home authorities were not always in agreement. Douglas, under stress of the immediate need, begged repeatedly for a grant from parliament, or, failing that, for a loan which the colony might repay when it had received the impetus which a wise expenditure would give to the development of its resources. In addition to roads, a seaport town, to render the colony with its five hundred miles of seaboard less dependent upon Victoria, was needed. For this purpose the governor, taking into account the difficulty of access to the Fraser, and looking forward to the time when the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island might be one, would have chosen Esquimalt, leaving the navigation of the Gulf of Georgia to a class of small, safe and swift steamers. Lighthouses at least the colony must have. To Douglas, with the distrust of the foreigner which he could never wholly dismiss, the military protection of the colony was among the government's chief responsibilities. The Satellite which was placed on the coast-guard service in 1858 had been almost immediately withdrawn, and though the 258 FINANCES admiral of the Pacific squadron had given what help he could, many boats had escaped the customs and several unlicensed miners had found their way to the diggings. The Royal Engineers, of course, had other and more pressing occupations than that of police duty. To these, and similar appeals, however, the colonial office had but one reply. It seemed inexplicable to Downing Street that a country whose sands were of gold and whose population had sprung up with such incredible rapidity should find the question of a revenue difficult. In vain Douglas pointed to the extraordinary difficulties presented in the opening up of the country; to the outflow of population, easily to be prevented if employment on the proposed works were available; and to the narrow means that were at the colony's disposal, especially in view of the high level of wages and prices which continued as long as free placer gold constituted the source of the country's prosperity. He was met only with repeated commendations to thrift and economy, it being left to his own sagacity to suggest how that policy could be exercised with the greatest safety. Again and yet again it was enunciated that both British Columbia and Vancouver Island must be self-supporting. He was at times even reproached with the slow progress made in road-building. Over sanguine, it may be, the governor was, in his estimate of the speed with which the colony was likely to attain its full development, and of the 259 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS il extent to which its progress would be helped by public works alone. Yet it is easy to perceive wherein the task of Douglas without help from England must have seemed as the making of bricks without straw. In the end, however, the conservative policy of the colonial office cannot be charged with having retarded a healthy growth. On one point of importance it was unquestionably right. The colony had no cause to burden its finances with the support of a military organization. The assistance which the admiralty was able in a regular way to afford proved entirely adequate to any need of this kind that arose, and the principle that if from England skill and discipline were sent the colony should furnish the raw material of a force, was at least well calculated to instil the habits of self-reliance and freedom. So also, a suggestion that a steamer should be supplied by Great Britain for the conveyance of troops and stores on the Fraser was abandoned without material inconvenience. To the appeal for lighthouses, which involved an expenditure of £7,000, a favourable answer was given —to the extent at least of one-half the cost and the loan of the whole amount, the colonies to assume the other moiety as a joint obligation. On the whole it was an unmixed boon that the influence of the home government, in so far as it prevailed, was of this restraining character. No feature of the rule of Douglas aroused more lasting opposition than the lavish scale on which he 260 REVENUE spent the income of the colony. It is true that very great achievements could be pointed to. Lawlessness was effectually suppressed—or rather, as has been seen, was never afforded the opportunity of raising its head; a self-supporting postal department was established; an assay office was founded and a mint projected; the navigation of the Fraser and Harrison rivers was improved; and, finally, communication with the mines, even with those of the remotest regions, was opened up and maintained on the efficient scale that has been noted. It was not to be supposed that results like these could be achieved without a struggle. The customs tax of ten per cent., and the license fees of the miners formed, in addition to the proceeds of land sales, the only sources of revenue. The taking out of licenses, as might have been expected, was avoided in every possible way by the miners, and the fees paid only upon compulsion. An attempt to collect a royalty on the gold output proved a failure, no means being at hand to compel the miners to announce their findings or to support the army of inspectors which would have been required to make an official surveillance effective. The whole led Douglas at one time to suggest an entire remodelling of the mining regulations under a plan by which the gold-fields might have been treated as Crown lands to be let in large or small allotments at a fixed rental. As the regulations stood, however, under the Act proclaimed in 1859, a not in- 261 ■i ! SIR JAMES DOUGLAS considerable sum, despite evasions, was annually j reaped by the colony. Nevertheless the end of the i administration of Douglas found the colony burdened with a yearly increasing debt, its loans barely negotiable in the London market, and its tax rate risen to nearly £19 per capita annually, or about eight times the rate then prevailing in Great Britain. Only by the most stringent economies in the years immediately following was the credit of the community preserved, so that by 1871 the rate had been reduced to approximately £5, or by over two-thirds. On the other hand, it is to be borne in mind that without the investments made by Douglas the development of the interior would undoubtedly have been retarded, while the control of the government over the heterogeneous and foreign population might have been weakened to the point of danger. The marked and plenary instructions of the colonial office with reference to the status of the Hudson's Bay Company in British Columbia, suggest some mention of the subsequent career of that corporation in the community with whose beginning it was so closely identified. The present is an appropriate connection in which to include a statement of this character, for of all the relations which the company bore to the colony those involving the question of finances were the most provocative of dispute, while the features of the rule of Doug- 262 am STATUS OF THE COMPANY las of which the government of Great Britain took closest cognizance were those which concerned his dealings with the company, his former master. The financial problem resolved itself into the question whether the colony should be responsible for the debts contracted by the company in the initial stages of its rule on Vancouver Island. The position assumed towards Douglas by the imperial government in the other matter had a very patent explanation. From his seventeenth year Douglas had breathed no other atmosphere than that of the great fur-trading monopoly. It was impossible that he should see from any other point of view. If specific instances were wanted, they were furnished by the acts with which on the first discovery of gold in the Fraser Valley he had sought to impose a tribute for the company on the development which immediately set in. It will be remembered that, on the occasion referred to, Douglas had proclaimed that for vessels other than those of the company to navigate the waters of the Fraser was an infringement of the company's rights; and that in a proposal which his government vetoed he would have bound the Pacific Mail Company to carry the company's goods and no others. For acts like these, the fact that his first commission as governor was held in conjunction with the office of chief factor, was to blame, rather than Douglas himself. But even when his direct connection with the company had been severed, a spirit of . 263 IP SIR JAMES DOUGLAS partizanship was bound to continue and to render necessary the most stringent measures of prevention. How that spirit wrought in the bosom of the governor is well illustrated in a passage which occurs in one of his later despatches, which shows as much by its tone as by the words themselves, his attitude to his master of so many years: "I will take the liberty," he wrote, "which I feel satisfied you will under the circumstances excuse, of correcting an erroneous impression which appears to pervade the public mind of England. I allude to the often asserted opinion that the Hudson's Bay Company have made an unjust and oppressive use of their power in this country, a statement which I can assure Her Majesty's government is altogether unfounded. On the contrary, it would be an easy matter to prove that they have been of signal service to their country, and that the British territory on the north-west coast is an acquisition won for the Crown entirely by the enterprise and energy of the Hudson's Bay Company. For, on commencing business operations in this quarter the whole coast was held by foreigners, and it is only since the year 1846 that the Hudson's Bay Company have derived any real protection from the license to trade, as until that epoch the trade was open to all citizens of the United States, in common with the Hudson's Bay Company. Perhaps you will excuse me saying this much, as a sense of justice leads me to exert the little influence 264 LATER HISTORY OF THE COMPANY I possess in protecting from injustice men who have served their country so well. At this moment I am making use of Hudson's Bay Company's establishments for every public office; and to their servants, for want of other means, I commit in perfect confidence the custody of public money." As to the internal history of the company after the lapse of its special privileges in 1859, a few words will suffice. On the retirement of Douglas, Dallas became the president of the Victoria board of management, of which Work and Dugald Mc- Tavish were the other members, Ogden having died in 1854. Work died in 1861, and as Dallas had been moved to Rupert's Land, McTavish succeeded to the command, with Finlayson and Tolmie on his board of advisers. In 1870, McTavish was tranferred to Montreal to fill a place left vacant by the rise of Donald A. Smith in the service, and James A. Grahame became the head of the board. After Grahame, followed William Charles in 1874, with Alexander Monro as manager of lands. But the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the inflow of population, and the imposition of the Canadian tariff, revolutionized the old conditions of the trade. Winnipeg became the centre of the Western Department as of other portions of the company's domain, the railway permitting frequent visits from the chief commissioner in charge. To-day a series of well conducted retail stores in the leading centres of population as 265 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS well as in the outposts of settlement are all that visibly remain, in the portions of the country that have been opened to industry, of the once all- powerful domination of the company in British Columbia. At least one result of the early rule of the Hudson's Bay Company is so important as to warrant special mention. It may be laid wholly to its influence that the opening years of settlement in British Columbia were free from the terrible scenes of Indian outrage. How great was that good fortune may be understood by a glance at the mining history of California or the later chronicles of other of the western states. To the Indians of British Columbia the rush of 1858 took on the form of an armed and unprovoked invasion of their territory. As they had received payment previously for their furs, so now they demanded payment for the gold of their streams and mountains. Without the restraining influence of the company, the product of nearly half a century of intercourse centred now in Douglas as the Indians' trusted friend of many years, a war of extermination might easily have been launched against the whites, especially against the domineering and aggressive immigrants from the United States. Expeditions overland from Oregon in the early days of the inflow had been harassed and the stragglers cut off. On the Fraser, however, in spite of constant provocation from the 266 RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS American miners, no outbreak occurred for some time. An incipient collision was caused in 1858 by the murder of two Frenchmen on the trail above the canyons of the Fraser, but a band of miners which forced its way to the forks of the Thompson put the enemy to flight and was followed by a second detachment which concluded a treaty of peace with over two thousand natives between Spuzzum and the Thompson. Douglas, who was on his way to the diggings at the time of the disturbance, did not deem further action necessary. He had on a previous occasion stood between the miner and the Indian with an impartiality that took count of provocation on either side. The native leader, a man of unusual energy of character and corresponding influence with his tribe, had been taken subsequently into the service of the government, where he proved exceedingly useful in the settlement of other difficulties. The justice of the governor, who reminded the gold-seekers at every turn that their position was one of sufferance under Her Majesty's government, that no abuses would be tolerated, and that the law would protect the Indian no less than the white man, was the most effective instrument that could have been devised in the interests of peace. In a short time the Indians were engaged in the digging of gold in perfect harmony with the other miners at wages ranging from three to five dollars a day. Two massacres perpetrated by the Chilcotins in 1864 were 267 1 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS almost the only later outbreaks that occurred. In other words, the fur trade had ceased to be, and the company had bequeathed to the industry that displaced it a docile and a useful native people. One other gift, of curious interest to the ethnologist, the early traders handed down. Among the first difficulties of the commerce of the north-west coast, not the least was found in the surprising number of the native languages. Within the limited area of Oregon no less than twelve distinct linguistic stocks, utterly dissimilar in words and grammar, were represented, while many of these were further split up into dialects which often differed widely from each other. All alike were remarkable for harshness and obscurity of pronunciation and construction, besides being spoken over a very restricted space. To provide some common means of communication became an immediate necessity, if barter were to be established at all. The result was that a trade language, called afterwards the "Chinook jargon," grew into existence. Though the foreigners took no pains to learn the native languages, it inevitably happened that at Nootka, at first the chief emporium of the trade, a few words of the dialect there spoken became known, while the Indians were made familiar with a few English or Spanish expressions. When the trade shifted to the Columbia, the Chinooks, quick at catching sounds, acquired the new vocabulary, and the jargon in this elementary form was in use among the natives at 268 THE CHINOOK JARGON as early a date as the visit of Lewis and Clark in 1804. Later, the Chinook language was drawn upon for additional words; the French-Canadian voy- ageur added his quota; and the jargon assumed a regular form, and became a means of general intercourse. In 1840* it contained about two hundred and fifty words, of which eighteen were of Nootka origin, forty-one were English, thirty-four French, and one hundred and eleven Chinook. By 1863 the number had doubled. Rude and formless as it was, it has been the source of great and varied benefits. Trade was made possible by it, friendly intercourse between the tribes was stimulated, many deadly feuds eliminated, and early missionary endeavour assisted. If not a model language, the jargon may at least have served to point the way to some higher invention for the uses of an advancing civilization. The mention of the Indian and his jargon leads naturally to the subject of the missionary. How the Jesuits from Canada were among the first in Oregon has been already stated. From that time forward, the Roman Catholic Church has never ceased to labour in the vast field of the Pacific slope. Father Demers was on Vancouver Island prior to 1846. Before that, he had visited the Upper Fraser. When in 1847 he was made a bishop, his diocese included not only British Columbia, but Alaska as well. The first Protestant church in the colony was built by the Hudson's Bay Company at Victoria in 1855. The Methodist 269 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Church sent its first missionaries to British Columbia in 1859. Thomas Crosby, the greatest name among them, arrived in 1862. Opening a school at Nanaimo in 1863, Crosby had soon extended his influence over one hundred and eighty miles of the coast, and over the Fraser valley as far as Yale. In 1874 he removed to Fort Simpson, whence in time the field was extended over one hundred and fifty miles to the north. A year before Crosby's arrival, the Presbyterian Church had begun the work of evangelization among the Indians and the miners. Perhaps the most signal achievement of the missionaries was that of William Duncan, a layman sent out in 1856 under the auspices of the Church of England Missionary Society, to the savage Tsimpsean tribes of the northern coast. At Met- lakahtla near Fort Simpson a thriving industrial community sprang up where before the coming of the missionary the most degraded natives of the coast were given over wholly to violence and superstition. Duncan's aims were evangelistic purely, and the collision which occurred with his ecclesiastical superiors led to the removal of his colony to Alaska after a prolonged and bitter contro- versyv To the clergy of the Church of England and of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who first entered the field of missionary labour in British Columbia, Douglas assigned a church, school and dwelling-house site forming a block of four building lots, or about an acre of land in extent, in all towns 270 AFFAIRS ON VANCOUVER ISLAND where they resided. He further recommended that free grants of one hundred acres of rural land should be made in aid of every cure in British Columbia. The Duke of Newcastle, however, with the experience of the Canadas in mind, while approving of the first arrangement, objected strongly to the practice of making free grants as endowments to livings. While developments such as these were in progress in British Columbia, affairs on Vancouver Island were not devoid of incident. Victoria sank with the back-wave of the excitement of 1858, but rose again, this time on a more stable basis, with the discoveries of 1860-61 in Cariboo. The assembly met at leisurely intervals. Matter for a lengthy period of its debates was furnished in the proposed organization of a joint stock company to supply Victoria with water. Some useful wagon roads were built in the neighbouring district. A registration act was passed. Education received some attention. The miners temporarily resident in Victoria were placated, chiefly through the personal tact of the governor. With the increase in population and the growth of political issues, the need for newspapers was felt; and the British Colonist was founded in 1858, soon ranging itself, under the editorship of Amor de Cosmos, in an opposition, not always consistent, to the governor and the council. Among the early occasions of 271 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS I this opposition was an incident which well illustrates the temper of the times, the character of Douglas and the nature of the rule which he maintained. The legislative assembly of the colony had originally held its sessions in a building belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, which served at once for the meetings of the House and as the offices of government. More commodious quarters becoming necessary, the governor proceeded to supply the want after the manner that seemed fitting. On due thought, the land beyond James Bay commended itself as a site, and a bridge was forthwith thrown across to connect it with the city. As the assembly was not asked for an appropriation (the Hudson's Bay Company as the proprietors of the island contributing the necessary funds under the arrangement of 1849 with the home government), its consent to the change was not deemed necessary. It soon appeared, however, that the assembly did not share this view. Resentment at the governor's attitude ran high, and, in a resolution passed to protest against the removal of the buildings, the action of Douglas was denounced as unconstitutional and a breach of privilege. The governor's reply was characteristic. The assembly had borne no share of the financial burden involved in this or other colonial improvements; as for the bridge, it was the plain prerogative of the Crown to build bridges wherever the public convenience demanded, provided that no private rights were invaded. He added 272 —"* CLERGY RESERVES an explanation of the reasons which had dictated his choice of a site. The position of the governor, under the existing constitution of the colony, was impregnable, and the assembly had no alternative but to yield. It may be added that time has set its seal of approval on the governor's action ; and the present stately buildings of the province, erected in 1893, stand on the pleasant and convenient ground that was selected by Douglas half a century ago. Other matters which engaged the attention of the island legislature in its early years were, the legalizing of United States currency, the payment of the liabilities of the colony, and the question of clergy reserves. The first was a plain necessity. In connection with the finances of the colony, the assembly from the first refused to become liable for the debts incurred during the regime of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the latter was left to settle its claims with the home government. The question of clergy reserves arose out of the original agreement between the Hudson's Bay Company and its clergyman on the island. Under this arrangement the major part (£300 of a total of £400) of the latter's stipend was to be derived from the sale of public lands at that time under the administration of the company. On the extinguishment of the company's title in 1859, the question of the continuance of this arrangement at once arose. The appointment of the then incumbent of the office had been intended, it appeared, as a per- 273 lis SIR JAMES DOUGLAS il manent one; and it was necessary therefore to provide for his emolument. There can be little doubt that if it had not been for the prompt and almost violent antagonism which was manifested, the situation would have drifted imperceptibly into that of a state-supported clergy. A reserve in excess of two thousand acres had been already set apart in Victoria alone, and the appointment of a bishop and two other clergymen authorized by the home government. The House of Assembly, however, refused without popular warrant to confirm the continuance of the old arrangement; and in the end even the grant of one hundred acres which it was proposed to make to the clergyman of the company was reduced to thirty and transferred under trustees to the local church. His salary was thenceforth paid by the contributions of his congregation alone, supplemented by missionary funds sent out from England. Shortly after this signal service to the colony, the first parliament of Vancouver Island was prorogued, the date being November, 1859. The elections followed in January, 1860, and the new House, of thirteen members, met about two months later. Helmcken alone of the former assembly was , re-elected; and he was continued in the Speaker's chair. The second legislature lasted until 1863, when it was succeeded by the third House, which in turn continued until the union of the two colonies in 1866. 274 THE SAN JUAN AFFAIR To the period of the dual governorship belong the more important of an extended series of negotiations having to do with the interpretation and enforcement of the Oregon boundary treaty concluded in 1846. The San Juan affair (for by that title the incident in question is usually known) had its root, as will be understood, in times remote, and its final solution was not reached until some years after Douglas had closed his official career. It may be dealt with in its entirety here, as, apart from its intrinsic interest, it presents almost the sole view of Douglas, in the higher sphere of international politics, under stress of a delicate and at times dangerous situation. It will be remembered that by the treaty of 1846, the 49th parallel of latitude had been accepted as the boundary between the United States and British territory from the Rocky Mountains to the centre of the channel which divides Vancouver Island from the mainland. From that point, it was agreed, the line was to continue by the middle of the channel southward to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, by the middle of which in turn it should proceed to the Pacific. Now, in the southern portion of the Gulf of Georgia, below the point at which the 49th parallel ceases as above to mark the frontier, the Haro archipelago occurs; and as a result of the configuration of these islands a choice of passages was offered by which the boundary might reach the lower waterway. At the time of 275 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the treaty only two of these straits had been surveyed: the Canal de Haro, so named, as the archipelago itself was named, from the Spanish explorer,—a strait seven miles in breadth, between the group and Vancouver Island; and the channel to the east, of half the width, known as Rosario Strait,—otherwise as Vancouver Strait, Ringgold's Channel, or the Canal de Fidalgo. The question immediately presented itself as to which of these was intended to mark the boundary by the treaty of 1846, the point involving the ownership of the archipelago mentioned, made up of three large and several smaller islands, of which San Juan, the most valuable, contained about fifty thousand acres. Though both nations, through over twenty years of controversy, as wearisome as it was long drawn out, attempted to prove that a definite understanding existed at the time the treaty was agreed to, it is obvious that the language of 1846 left room for dispute and that neither of the governments in that year took cognizance of the exact path of the boundary as it passed from the Gulf of Georgia to the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The various steps by which the issue became sharply defined, covering in all the first ten years of the dispute, were briefly as follows. About the time of the founding of Victoria, and as a part of the general policy involved in that development, the Hudson's Bay Company had landed a number of sheep and cattle on the Island of San Juan. The 276 TAXATION ON SAN JUAN colony prospered, and within a few years' time not less than several thousand head of live stock, including sheep, cattle, swine and horses, were included in the company's establishment. A salmon fishery also was erected in 1851, and the Americans who had already begun to frequent the island were warned to fish inshore. Thus matters remained for a year longer, when the legislature of Oregon proceeded to organize the archipelago, without reference to any political significance which the operations of the British company might have, as a portion of its domain. Again, in 1853, when the territory of Washington took form, the islands passed, or were regarded by the continental authorities as passing, under the new jurisdiction. No outward change in conditions, however, occurred until 1854 when an attempt to levy duties by the United States authorities on stock imported by the company led to a sharp dispute between the latter and the officer deputed to enforce the tax. This brought Douglas for a brief time on the scene, but had little effect beyond calling forth an idle assertion of sovereignty on the part of each nation. No actual collection was made at the time. In 1855, however, thirty or more sheep of the company were seized and sold at auction by the sheriff of Whatcom County, Washington. This at once brought the affair into international prominence; and in 1856 commissioners were appointed by Great Britain and the United States to examine 277 1 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS into the data bearing thereon. Pending the ex- j pected settlement, by order of the Secretary of j State for the United States, no taxes were en-1 forced on San Juan, though the island was not j acknowledged as a British possession. A curious \ amenity during these early years was the protection I cheerfully afforded by the company to the United i States officials from the roving bands of Indians | whose descents were always of peculiar danger to the "Boston" frontiersmen. The commissioners appointed by Great Britain j were Captains Prevost and Richards of the Royal | Navy, the former of whom arrived in H.M.S. Satellite in June, 1857. The latter reached Victoria in H.M.S. Plumper a few months later and at once began an extended series of explorations and surveys for the carrying out of which he had been specially delegated. Mr. Archibald Campbell, with a staff of astronomers and engineers, represented the United States. By December, 1857, six formal meetings had been held by the commissioners, ending in a complete disagreement. The treaty, as interpreted by the British, demanded that the channel constituting the boundary from the 49th parallel southward should possess three characteristics: (1) it should separate the continent from Vancouver Island; (2) it should admit of the boundary being carried through it in a southerly direction; and (3) it should be a navigable channel. In the light of these requirements, it was urged against the 278 THE ARGUMENTS Canal de Haro and in favour of Rosario Strait that the former could not be said to separate Vancouver Island from the mainland, seeing that the separation was already effected by the other channel ; that a line drawn through the Canal de Haro must perforce run westerly for a considerable distance; that though the Haro channel answered to the third demand, yet, from the rapidity and variableness of its currents and its lack of anchorages, it was less suitable for the navigation of sailing vessels than Rosario Strait, which was the channel followed by the vessels of the Hudson's Bay Company since 1825. The occupation of San Juan by the company for so many years was also held to bind the island to the British colony. On the other hand, the American commissioners contended that of the several navigable passages connecting the Gulf of Georgia with the Straits of Fuca, the Canal de Haro was preeminent in width, depth, and volume of water; that it was the one usually designated on the maps in use at the time the treaty was under consideration; that the other navigable channels through the archipelago separated mere groups of islands from each other; and that the Canal de Haro, since it washed the shores of Vancouver Island, was the only one that could be said to divide the continent from that island. The objection that the Canal de Haro would not throughout its entire course carry the boundary line in a southerly direction was not, in the American 279 Fff SIR JAMES DOUGLAS view, well taken, seeing that the word "southerly" was applied in the treaty equally to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the general course of which lay north by west. In brief, it appeared to the United States that the deflection of the boundary from the 49th parallel was sanctioned by the treaty with the intention of securing Vancouver Island alone to Great Britain and that with this broad principle in view the archipelago should be considered as belonging to the mainland and not to the great coastal island. Two years had been consumed in these and other fruitless negotiations, for though a central passage navigable to ships had been discovered by the British survey party and proposed to the United States by way of compromise no tangible result had followed. Meanwhile a number of squatters, consisting mainly of American miners on their return from the Fraser diggings, had settled on San Juan Island. In the year 1859 they totaled some twenty-nine, as opposed to nineteen servants of the company. It was a collision between these diverse local interests that brought on the most acute phase of the dispute—a phase which but for the conspicuous tact of the British authorities on the spot might easily have plunged the nations into war. It seems that an American named Cutler who had settled on the island in 1859 was much annoyed by the depredations of a hog belonging to 280 awi TROOPS LANDED the Hudson's Bay Company, and had shot and killed the animal. Of the altercation which followed various accounts have survived. According to one, the arrest of Cutler and his removal to Victoria for trial was threatened. At least it was demanded by the company that a stipendiary magistrate should be stationed on the island. The then commander of the military department of Oregon was General Harney, a popular but injudicious officer, whose southern origin has led to the suspicion that on the eve of the war of secession he would have viewed with equanimity the sowing of strife between the United States and England. The news of the Cutler affair reaching his ears during a visit to San Juan, he accepted the version most unfavourable to the British authorities, and, without mandate from Washington, transferred a company of his command to the island, for the protection, as he alleged, of its American citizens. Other detachments followed until the troops on San Juan reached a total of four hundred and sixty-one, with eight thirty-two pounders. A request from the governor for the withdrawal of the force met with a peremptory refusal, in the first instance from Pickett, the officer in charge, and afterwards from Harney himself. A suggestion of a joint military occupation subsequently made by Douglas was also refused in terms that gave just grounds for indignation. At Victoria the excitement was for a time intense and the presence of the Plumper, Satellite, Tribune and other 281 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS British ships of war, having on board a force greatly superior to that which held San Juan, would easily, j under the provocation of the moment, have precipitated an encounter but for the patience of i those in command. Under the statesmanlike policy \ that was adopted, only a single vessel at a time was kept in San Juan harbour, for show of occupation, while the rest were held at a safe distance. When the details of the affair reached Washington, the fruits of this forbearance were quickly reaped. An official investigation was conducted on the spot; Harney was ultimately recalled; the officer who had given offence on San Juan was removed; the American troops were for the most part withdrawn; and an arrangement was entered into by which a force of British equal in numbers to those that were left were landed without opposition on the island. For twelve years the joint occupation was continued amid perfect harmony and good-will. The dispute, thus stripped of the element of danger, continued for a short time longer to engage the attention of the British minister and the secretary of state at Washington, and then lapsed into oblivion with the outbreak of the American civil war. It revived for a moment in 1866 ; and in 1869 gathered so much notice as to suggest its reference to the president of the Swiss republic. It was still unsettled, however, in 1871, when a joint high commission met at Washington to consider this and other questions affecting the relations of the United 282 ■^ FINAL SETTLEMENT States and Great Britain in North America. After a renewed discussion, as interminable as the first, it was agreed that the whole affair should be submitted to the arbitration of the German Emperor. Prevost was again the British representative at Berlin, while- Bancroft, the historian, acted for the United States. Reports of experts were obtained and the question was debated anew from every standpoint. Finally, the Emperor declared his award in favour of the United States. The date was October 21st, 1872. In British Columbia, where the result was accepted with equanimity, though not without keen sense of loss, the hand of time had wrought many changes since the excitement of 1859, and the colony was now a province of the young Dominion. In the annual message of President Grant in the following year the award was hailed with special satisfaction as leaving the two countries for the first time in history without a question of disputed territory on this continent. The remark was premature. It was only shortly after that the boundary between Alaska and the Dominion was called in question, to remain a subject of negotiations until 1903. The Behring Sea dispute, moreover, had still to arise and run its fevered course until its settlement under the Paris award of 1897. nf 11 It is also to the later years of the rule of Douglas, and to the history at large of the two colonies, 283 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS that the wonderful story of Cariboo belongs. The tale has been often told. It is well worthy of telling by the historian of British Columbia, seeing that the Cariboo placers gave permanency, as the Fraser and Thompson diggings had given form, to the mainland colony. The bars of the Fraser, in fact, began to fail within a few months of their discovery. Population had no sooner reached its highest flow than it began to ebb. This was perhaps inevitable from the very magnitude of the movement. But into the spirit of the country, already sinking, new vigour was instilled at the magic bidding of gold. To the miners pushing on to the remote and inaccessible headwaters of the Fraser, where in their fancy lay the coarse metal of which the lower diggings held but the sandy effluent, the reward came in a series of finds that opened at once a new era in gold-mining. In the autumn of 1859 the first strikes on the Quesnel were reported. Richer and richer discoveries followed, and in six months the famous Cariboo rush of 1860 had begun. The excitement drew upon a much wider field than that of 1858, though it never brought so large and tumultuous an army. From the ends of the earth they came, by sea around Cape Horn, by the Isthmus of Panama (this being the favourite passage), and by caravan across the prairies. From Canada the route lay by Chicago to St. Paul, thence by water to Fort Garry, thence by the trails of the fur traders, a desperately difficult journey, as 284 CARIBOO the narratives of several parties attest. Rival agencies of transport to the diggings fought for the traffic; and frauds upon the ignorant abounded. For five years the inflow, though varying, was constant. Most important of all, the immigrants counted many well fitted by birth and training to give a solid basis to the country which was to be theirs long after every creek of the north had yielded up the lure that first attracted them. The region thus forced upon the attention of the world may be roughly described as the high, wooded plateau that lies between the sources of the Fraser and the Thompson and is contained between the upper reaches of these waters as they move towards their junction. The Bear, the Willow, the Cottonwood and the Quesnel, radiating from the auriferous slate of the Snowshoe Mountains and falling into the Fraser, are its four great rivers, all alike famous from the wealth of the tributaries on which the diggings of the new field were established. It will be seen that the district penetrated into the very heart of New Caledonia, where, since the days of Conolly and Douglas, the Hudson's Bay Company had held the even and prosperous tenor of its way: first under the command of Dease, famous for his discoveries on the Upper Liard and for his Arctic voyages; later under Ogden, wit as well as trader and organizer, and destined, as we have seen, to a larger r61e in Oregon; and at the last under Manson, who for 285 SB 1 J SIR JAMES DOUGLAS twelve years of diminishing profits held the reins of power in that most desolate of all the company's dominions. Needless to add, the rush into the Cariboo, overflowing soon after to Omineca and Cassiar, sounded the death-knell of the fur trade, already thrust back from the southern districts by the events of the preceding years. Apart from their richness, a radical change in the method of working contributed not a little to the success of the Cariboo placers. On the lower Fraser, the rocker and the sluice alone had been employed, and operations were confined almost wholly to the surface. In the Cariboo, deep mining was at once introduced; and by shafts, drifts, pumps and hoists the gold-laden earth was brought to the surface. So rich was the result that before the end of the second year two million dollars worth of coarse nuggets had been shipped to Victoria by the fifteen hundred miners of the district, and Cariboo had taken a secure place in history by the side of Ballarat and the Sacramento. It would be impossible here to trace the steps by which the various camps were opened and the country stripped of its treasure. But the most famous must at least be named. Each creek had a history of its own. Quesnel Forks was the earliest locality to develop into a permanent camp. A party of five with two rockers took out a hundred ounces of gold in a single week, and mining at this point continued for several years. On Cedar and Horsefly 286 THE CARIBOO CAMPS Creeks, southern tributaries of the Quesnel, several claims, among them the "Aurora," yielded equal returns. The movement spread also in 1860 to the Bear River. In January, 1861, came the extraordinary finds on Antler Creek, followed in the spring by those on the Harvey, Keithley, Cunningham and Grouse, all the latter streams flowing from the north into the Quesnel. The rush now overflowed to the Willow and the Cottonwood. Barkerville sprang up on Williams Creek in the midst of a district fabulously rich, and has since remained the centre of distribution in Cariboo. The Lowhee and Lightning Creek camps followed. In 1862 the number of miners had risen to five thousand and the output to three millions. Both of these totals were exceeded in 1863; but after 1864 population and gold alike began to decline. In 1867, however, there were still no less than sixty paying claims in operation, and several of the mines continued to produce for many years. In Omineca and Cassiar the excitement did not reach its height until 1871 and had subsided by 1875; but in no year were the results so extraordinary as in Cariboo, from which in the first seven years alone an aggregate yield of twenty-five millions was taken. The gold occurred chiefly in a deposit of blue clay underlying the beds of the creeks, many of which might literally be said to have been paved with the metal. Individual earnings were astounding. Over one thousand dollars a day were made by many. Six 287 Htl-I SIR JAMES DOUGLAS hundred dollars to the single pan were recorded. One party took over seven hundred ounces in two days, and in two months had heaped up a hundred thousand dollars worth of gold. The difficulties were correspondingly enormous. Joined to the inaccessi- i bility of the region, the shortness of the season and i the terrible severity of the winters, the periodical floods and the depth at which the gold occurred made the workings all but impossible to the average gold-miner. Prices in the early days, when means of transportation in the winter were limited to dog sleds between Alexandria and Antler, rose to an extraordinary level. Flour was $72 per barrel; beans 45 cents per pound ; and bacon 68 cents per pound. To this the end came with the construction of the Cariboo wagon road. On the whole, it is believed that of the army which invaded Cariboo during 1860-63 one-third returned with nothing, one- third with moderate earnings and the rest with independent fortunes. Terrific feats of endurance were recorded of the men who under the spell of the gold mania struggled against the tangled forests, the yawning canyons and the precipitous mountains covered with snow which made up the region; struggled, too, against the starvation of body and soul that was the miners' lot, bereft as they were of kindly human intercourse, ruled by the law of the beast, and in the end doomed either to disappointment, or, if success were won, to the folly or viciousness that too often seemed its necessary part 288 THE DUAL GOVERNORSHIP Truly if the web of that story is of romance, the woof is of tragedy. Yet it was here the colony struck root; and almost every name in its early annals, excepting those of the fur traders, is associated with the stirring history of the gold-fields of Cariboo. It was in the year in which the first decline in Cariboo became apparent that the active connection of Douglas with the administration of the two colonies terminated. In the case of Vancouver Island his commission lapsed through the efflux of time in September, 1863. The occasion was marked by popular demonstrations unmistakably sincere; and the crowning honour of his career came in the knighthood conferred upon him by the Queen. He was succeeded by Arthur Kennedy, Esq., who took up the duties of office in the following March. In connection with the retirement of Douglas from the governorship of the mainland colony, which did not occur until 1864, a number of incidents of first importance in the history of the colony require to be mentioned. As early as 1861, the dual governorship had caused dissatisfaction in British Columbia. Narrow as was the authority of the assembly of Vancouver Island, it was at least a visible recognition of the people's inherent right to govern. On the mainland nothing of the sort existed, the governor being the maker, as, with the assistance of the officials sent from England, he was also the administrator, of the 289 m\ SIR JAMES DOUGLAS laws. Sectional jealousy, especially that of the leading towns, rather than any deeply reasoned wish for similar institutions, led to an agitation, and the feeling eventually took form in a petition which asked among other things for the establishment of a representative assembly. It will be of interest to note what were regarded by the residents of the lower Fraser as the chief grounds for criticism of the manner in which their government was administered. As described by Douglas himself in his official report on the matter they were as follows: 1. That the governor, colonial secretary and attorney-general did not reside permanently in British Columbia. 2. That the taxes on goods were excessive as compared with the population (the latter being estimated at seven thousand, exclusive of Indians) and were in part levied on boatmen, who derived no benefit from them. The absence of a land tax was also complained of. 3. That the progress of Victoria was stimulated at the expense of British Columbia, and that no encouragement was given to shipbuilding, the leading industry of New Westminster, or to the foreign trade of the colony. 4. That money had been injudiciously spent on public works, and that contracts had been given without public notice, with the result that they were subsequently sublet at a much lower rate. 290 DISSATISFACTION ON THE MAINLAND 5. That faulty administration had been made of the public lands, several sections which had been declared public reserves having been afterwards claimed by parties connected with the colonial government. 6. The want of a registry office for the recording of transfers and mortgages was pointed out. The reply of the governor to the first of these complaints was, that he had spared no exertion in his divided duty to promote the interests of both colonies, and that he had not consciously neglected any opportunity of adding to the prosperity of either. As for the other members of the executive, their offices, if confined to British Columbia alone, would be little better than sinecures. The taxation of the colony as compared, for example, with that of the neighbouring state of Washington, was not excessive, and had been spent on roads and public works in a manner that had materially reduced the general cost of living; moreover the population including Chinamen was ten thousand, or, including Indians (who, inasmuch as they were becoming more and more consumers of imported goods, were entitled to be classed with the other inhabitants), some thirty thousand, so that the rate was £2 per capita instead of £7 10s. as complained of. The remission of duty on shipbuilding material, it was pointed out, would open the door to injustice and discontent, and would do little good to New Westminster as long as the timber business re- 291 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS mained a monopoly in the hands of a few persons. Clauses four and five were declared to be wholly unfounded. With regard to the final grievance, a measure providing means for the registration of real estate, the governor promised, would be passed at the earliest moment practicable, the delay having arisen only through the peculiar difficulties of the situation. On the broad question of the adoption of representative institutions, Douglas was of the opinion that the fixed population of the colony was too small and of too motley a character to render the experiment feasible. The British residents were few in number; there was no manufacturing or farming class; the lumbering and salmon-curing industries which to-day are so important in the Fraser valley had not yet been called into existence; and the traders who constituted the only body in the colony Which was not migratory had comparatively a small interest in its development. As a matter of fact New Westminster had in 1862 only one hundred and sixty-four male adults, Hope but one hundred and eight, and Douglas but thirty-three; and these were the only centres which had definitely expressed approval of the change. The governor's avowed intention had been to proceed by degrees to the establishment of popular institutions, through the formation of municipal councils to serve as training schools for the people prior to the adoption of the larger idea of a colonial assembly. 292 VICTORIA There was, in fact, a radical difference in the position of the two colonies at this early time of which the discontent on the mainland took too little account. The island had the trades, professions and real estate of its inhabitants on which to levy taxes. British Columbia had its gold alone ; and a duty on the supplies carried inland formed its most obvious means of revenue. The imposition of a tariff had the advantage also of arousing no opposition from the miners, who were the sole support of the colony, and whose requirements in the way of roads rendered a large expenditure necessary. A free trade policy, on the other hand, was essential to Victoria, barred as the city was from the mother country by distance and from the United States by a hostile tariff, in order that the British Columbia market at least might fall to her share. She was the centre of population, the seat of trade, the nucleus of colonization, and the chief source of revenue in the British settlements of the Pacific; to maintain this position it was necessary that she should remain the general marketing place of those possessions. The position of the governor, therefore, if it afforded a unique opportunity from the standpoint of the colonies' interests as a whole, was of no ordinary difficulty in view of the opposing policies which it was his duty if possible to reconcile. The arguments which Douglas advanced on the occasion of the discontent of 1861 did not ultimate- 293 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS ly prevail. When the day of his retirement arrived in 1863, the colonial office lost no time in deciding that separate governors for the colonies were a necessity. The decision may have been prompted by the difficulty of securing an officer equal to the task of Douglas; but it was still more largely due to the inherent weakness of the original arrangement. So, also, it was resolved that at least the first step towards the adoption of representative institutions must be taken without further delay. The suggestion of Douglas that the end should be reached through the formation of municipal councils was not approved; but at least it was perceived, though with avowed reluctance, that the approach to an elective assembly must be gradual The avenue which suggested itself was the organization | of a legislative council on a somewhat novel basis. The power of nominating the council was to be vested in the governor; but he was directed at the same time to so exercise that power as to constitute of the council a partially representative body. This end, it was thought, would be secured if one- third of the council was to consist of the executive, one-third of magistrates from different parts of the colony, and the balance of representatives of the people. The plan, it was admitted, did not overcome the difficulties arising out of the migratory nature of the population ; but it was preferred with its imperfections to any untried arrangement. The matter of evolving a working plan for securing the 294 REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT popular representation,—whether by ascertaining informally the opinion of the residents in each locality, by bringing the matter before public meetings, or (as in Ceylon) by accepting the nominee of certain corporate bodies or societies,—was left to the wisdom of the governor. To inaugurate the scheme an extension of one year's time was made to the commission of Douglas as governor of British Columbia. The fact that the truest interests of the colonies lay in union was not overlooked by the government of Great Britain in advising this arrangement. Economy and efficiency of administration, the development of political capacity, and the promotion of commerce, called with one voice for solidarity. In salaries alone the saving would have been considerable. In each, the governor received £3,01)0, and the chief-justice £1,200. The colonial secretary received in Vancouver Island £600, and in British Columbia £800; the attorneys-general, £300 and £500, respectively ; the treasurers, £600 and £750, respectively; and the surveyors-general, £500 and £800, respectively. In addition, British Columbia had a collector of customs at £650; a chief inspector of police at £500, and a registrar of deeds at £500. Douglas in a despatch written a few months before the end of his official term strongly advocated union. For the time, however, local prejudices proved too strong ; and Frederick Seymour, formerly governor of Honduras, was appointed 295 m SIR JAMES DOUGLAS to succeed Sir James in the governorship of British Columbia. In a previous chapter the words were given of the address with which Douglas as governor of Vancouver Island opened the first assembly of that colony. The speech with which he greeted the first meeting of a representative body on the mainland, is of no inferior interest as reflecting current opinions and conditions. The date was January 21st, 1864. The withholding of popular institutions, he declared, during the infancy of the colony, had been prompted only by regard for its happiness and prosperity. A vigorous prosecution of public works was urged for the purpose of giving value to the waste lands of the colony. For the increase of population public lands had been thrown open to settlement, and every effort made to promote the development of the country, though thus far with unsatisfactory results. From the Indians, favourable reports had been received; reserves based on a maximum allowance of ten acres for each family had been already set aside for them. The opening of postal and telegraphic communications between British Columbia and the head of Lake Superior was foreshadowed. Appropriations for education and religious purposes were recommended, with a disclaimer added of any desire to see an endowed church in the colony. Finally, the expenditures of the past year, amounting in all to £192,860 (of which £83,937 had been spent on roads and £31,615 296 THE UNION OF THE COLONIES on civil establishment) were laid before the council. The revenue to meet this was but £110,000 of which over half was derived from customs dues. Of the deficit, £65,805 had been met by loans, a sum which still left £17,055 to be accounted for, besides an additional £10,700 due to the imperial government for the expenses of the Royal Engineers. For 1864, the expenditures were estimated at £107,910 and the income at £120,000, though no provision was made in the former for the maintenance of a gold escort or for the erection of further public works. The address concluded with an appeal to the council for advice on this pressing problem of finances. It will be of interest to notice before leaving this part of the subject the steps by which the union, after over three years of further intermittent discussion, was achieved. In the beginning the movement was confined entirely to Vancouver Island, where by the year 1865 it had gathered not a little force, the assembly voting strongly in its favour and being willing to leave the question of a constitution unreservedly to the home government. The relations of council and assembly in the island colony had not been altogether happy. There was no medium between the governor and the assembly, and the time of the council was occupied for the most part in correcting the mistakes and undoing the crude legislation of the lower house. The decline of trade 297 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS which accompanied the exhaustion of the bars of the Fraser, and the fact that the Cariboo mines were never a poor man's diggings and therefore did not attract more than a comparatively small population, had also led in large part to the dissatisfaction felt in Victoria, where the most of the supplies for the mines were sold. Victoria, moreover, had had no share in the important developments which followed in 1864 the discoveries of the Kootenay district, situated about five hundred miles due east of New Westminster and yielding for a time during the "Big Bend" rush, a total revenue to the public treasury of not less than £1,000 a week. The entire supplies for these were secured by the way of New Westminster or the Columbia. The mines even attracted many from Victoria's best customer, Cariboo. On the other hand there were several reasons why the mainland colony should for the time look askance upon the idea of union. The year 1865 was one of exceptional progress in the opening up of the country. The trail from the Fraser to Kootenay, surmounting three ranges of mountains and not only affording access to the mines but establishing a new route through the Kootenay pass from the Pacific to the Hudson's Bay lands beyond the mountains, was in itself a work which might well infuse self-confidence even into a struggling colony. By the end of 1865 New Westminster was connected with the whole telegraphic system of the United States, 298 <Xm TERMS OF THE UNION Canada and Newfoundland, and with Cariboo. The constitution of 1863 had been successfully placed in operation, the popular candidates being elected at public meetings called by the magistrates. But the real opposition to union lay in the rivalry of Victoria and New Westminster for the honour of being chosen as the capital, and the fear which the latter had of being supplanted by the older, wealthier and more influential community. Being almost the sole municipality which found a voice, New Westminster was able for some time to combat successfully all agitation for union. The upper country cared little whether the colonies were one or separate. But on the lower Fraser it came at last to be felt that the uncertainty was interfering seriously with progress. In 1866, a petition in favour of union was signed by four hundred and forty-five persons, and there was probably a much wider feeling had it been able to make itself heard. In the end the British government decided the question, and the authority of the executive government and council of British Columbia was extended over Vancouver Island, the number of members of the council being increased to twenty-three. The customs regulations of the mainland colony were likewise extended to the island. Other ordinances remained for a time as before. The original authority of the governor to make regulations for peace, order and good government was not restricted. The Act bore date of August 299 1 i SIR JAMES DOUGLAS 6th, 1866. A short time after, the attorney-general of Vancouver Island introduced a bill for assimilating its laws with those of British Columbia. There then remained only the question of the seat of government—a rock which the Act of union had discreetly avoided. Amid the violent altercations of partisans, the choice fell on Victoria, and though the bitterness of the defeat rankled long on the mainland no effort subsequently availed to secure a reversion of the decision. The foregoing outline of the process by which British Columbia, as we know it to-day, attained its united form, has gone somewhat beyond the time when the man who had brought order out of the chaos and had been the chief agent in shaping the progress of the colony in the course it has since pursued, laid down the direction of its affairs. With the setting in active motion of the forces which resulted in union, Sir James Douglas passed from the scene. It is a moment of solemnity, for communities as for individuals, when the past is cast off forever. How large a part was Douglas of all that had happened since the birth of the two colonies has been sufficiently shown. But there was an added reason why his retirement at this time was of no ordinary significance, little though the change was marked by outward or immediate results. The spirit of that old time force, the Hudson's Bay Company, which had been the first to conquer the 300 RETIREMENT OF DOUGLAS tremendous barriers by which nature has divided the Pacific slope from the rest of the continent, which had subdued the intractable native, and had opened the first pathway for civilization to the western ocean, lived and breathed in Sir James Douglas. It died only with his passing. The change was for better things, as the future was soon to show, but that this was possible is a tribute to the wisdom with which the foundations had been laid. It is left to treat of the remaining years of Douglas and to estimate the value of his work and personality in the founding of British Columbia. In connection with that task it will be well to note in very brief review the leading features of the later history of the colony, especially those that have their visible root in the era of colonial administration, in order the better to appreciate the nature of that early planting from which the present fruitful harvest has sprung. 'ill 301 CHAPTER IX CONFEDERATION AFTER toil,—rest. Long before the period of his commissions had expired, Douglas had made up his mind: his public connection with the colonies must cease. No one was more conscious than he that his day of greatest usefulness was past, and that his present office, if continued, would be one only of increasing difficulties. For a place in the new regime he had no inclination. Accustomed as he had been to untrammelled rule, he could play no part in the turmoil of reconstruction and divided power which was now approaching, and which was still to last for several years before the people of British Columbia achieved entire control of their administration. The retirement of Sir James Douglas from the governorship of the two colonies was marked by all those forms and ceremonies with which the man of public affairs is wont to pass from the scene of his activity, and which may mean much or little. There had undoubtedly arisen a deep-rooted opposition to the principle of irresponsible government in British Columbia and to Douglas as the representative of that principle. Yet in the mass of customary laudation with which his days of office closed, the note of gratitude for the unequalled experience which he 303 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS had brought to the service of the country and for the value of the work he had done was persistently present, even in the minds of those who realized most clearly the necessity for change. There were banquets and processions, presentations of memorials and tributes of the press. The formula was repeated in the respective capitals of the colonies. At Victoria, two hundred of the leading citizens of Vancouver Island took their seats at a dinner in his honour; in New Westminster, where settlement was less compact, seventy-five. Both colonies presented addresses signed by hundreds of their inhabitants to the Duke of Newcastle, colonial secretary, in which admiration of the governor was warmly expressed. The legislature of Vancouver Island declared its belief that the signal prosperity which the colony had enjoyed was "mainly ascribable to the policy which His Excellency inaugurated," the governor characteristically replying with an exhortation to harmony between the executive and the legislature. So, likewise, the council of Vancouver Island placed on record its high estimation of the policy of Douglas "in originating and administering the government" of the colony, of his appreciation of his duties and responsibilities, and of the moral qualities which had adorned his actions and endeared him to the people of the island. In Victoria, the universal respect in which the governor was held had kindled into an affection which was plainly manifest in the demon- 304 ill ADDRESSES OF FAREWELL strations with which his departure was accompanied. Twenty-two years from the time that the natives of Camosun first saw the harbour ruffled by the Beaver, Douglas passed through the streets of the city he had founded on his last official progress, the people thronging the way and crowding to grasp his hand as the guns of the fort pealed their farewell salute. On the mainland, where he was at one time regarded as the natural enemy of the colony, it is of significance to quote the following from an address which was presented at New Westminster and which bore the names of over nine hundred of the inhabitants: I During the period His Excellency has been in office, he has assiduously devoted his remarkable talents to the good of the country; ever unmindful of self, he has been accessible to all, and we firmly believe that no man could have had a higher appreciation of the sacred trust vested in him, and none could have more faithfully and nobly discharged it than he has. "The great road system which Governor Douglas has introduced into the colony is an imperishable monument of his judgment and foresight. It has already rendered his name dear to every miner, and future colonists will wonder how so much could have been accomplished with such small means. The colony already feels the benefit resulting from his unwavering policy in this respect, and year by year will the wisdom of that policy become more manifest. 305 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS "During his term of office the laws have ever been rigidly, faithfully and impartially administered; the poorest man has always felt that in a just cause he would not have to seek redress in vain, and the country has in consequence enjoyed a remarkable exemption from crime and disturbance." It was in reply to this that Douglas uttered the words that sum up, better than any other of his own that have survived, the total of his endeavour as governor: "This is surely the voice and heart of British Columbia. Here are no specious phrases, no hollow or venal compliments. This speaks out broadly, and honestly, and manfully. It assures me that my administration has been useful; that I have done my duty faithfully; that I have used the power of my sovereign for good, and not for evil; that I have wronged no man, oppressed no man; but that I have, with upright rule, meted out equal-handed justice to alL" Among the most persistent opponents of the administration of Douglas was Amor de Cosmos, founder and editor of the Victoria Colonist. Few names in western history are more widely known. Beneath the eccentricity which was his most marked outward characteristic, and of which the changing of his name in that wild and free society was a conspicuous example, lay a genuine public spirit and a dogged resolution in resisting what he deemed to be abuses. Born in Nova Scotia, where the fight 306 AMOR DE COSMOS for responsible government was early fought and won, and by nature combative to a degree, he found in the form of administration existing in British Columbia, a condition which kindled within him all that fierceness of political invective of which he was the accomplished master. Here was not only government without a legislature and without a ministry, but government by a man as autocratic by instinct and training as by the ordinance from which his power was derived. To de Cosmos, not free from opportunism and seeking now the pathway to his own future, Douglas was the mere embodiment of the Hudson's Bay Company's influence carried forward into an era in which it had no place, and in which it could work only for evil. From the embittered warfare waged daily in the columns of the Colonist, an organized party took form in opposition to every act of the governor, an opposition which was soon extended to the mainland, and which was silenced only with the inauguration of popular government in 1871. Among the friends of the retiring governor, de Cosmos, therefore, could not be reckoned. His tribute, accordingly, to the personal worth of Douglas was of no ordinary value when in the Colonist of October 13th, 1863, he wrote as follows:— "We have conceived it our duty, upon some occasions, to differ from the policy pursued by Mr. Douglas, as governor of this colony, and we 307 ill SIR JAMES DOUGLAS have, from time to time had occasion, as public journalists, to oppose that policy: we trust, however, that such opposition has at no time been factious—personal to the governor himself it has never been. If we have opposed the measures of government, we have never, in our criticism of the public acts of the executive head of that government, failed in our esteem for the sterling honesty of purpose which has guided those acts, nor for the manly and noble qualities and virtues which adorn the man. The intimate relations which have so long existed between Sir James Douglas and the people of Victoria will shortly undergo a change, and we are quite sure that we echo the sentiments of the public of Victoria in saying that His Excellency will carry into private life the honest esteem and hearty good wishes of all Vancouver. His services to his country as governor of these colonies will not be forgotten for many years to come." It may be of interest to mention here that from 1863 until 1866 the desire for the annexation of the colonies outrode all other sentiments in Vancouver Island, and that de Cosmos himself was among the most persistent advocates of unconditional union, notwithstanding that the change involved for the time the acceptance of administration by the Crown. The ceremonies of leaving office ended, Douglas was free to carry out the dream of many years—a 308 mm iiHM*r VISIT TO EUROPE voyage to Europe. There is little of public interest in the journey; but a diary in which he kept a daily record of his movements and impressions throws a singularly valuable light upon his tastes and sympathies, the variety of his information, and many of his views on public affairs. Conspicuous throughout are his affection for his family, the fervour of his religious convictions, the characteristic love of a Scotchman for his native country, and the wide range of subjects in which he had an interest. Leaving Esquimalt in May, he sailed by way of Panama for Southampton, the voyage as he covered it ex- eeeding ninety-six hundred miles. The summer and early autumn were spent in England and Scotland, where he visited one of his daughters in the vicinity of Inverness, and the rest of the year in France, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The south of France, Spain and Italy were visited in the opening months of the following year. In March he was in Rome, where the first attack of an illness which was to give him much anxiety was recorded. His active life in the open and his severely regular habits had hitherto made disease unknown to him; the .derangement of the heart to which he finally fell a victim was constitutional or perhaps induced by the strenuous early life of the fur traders, many of whom though vigorous in the extreme failed to reach old age. But the mind of Douglas, even in Italy, was never far away from the land to which he had given his 309 HI if SIR JAMES DOUGLAS life. At Villetri, near Rome, on the 6th of March, he sees "rocky land covered with brush, places which recall the narrow little vales between the ridges of Work's farm near Victoria "; and again, "a cloudy sky, a short sprinkling of rain, the low springing grass, the damp earth and the brave little daisy are not unlike early March scenes in Victoria." From Italy he passed again through Germany to Paris where the news of the death of a daughter plunged him in deep affliction. From France he returned to London and in a few months more had arrived at Victoria, no longer to bear an active part in public affairs. The rest of the life of Douglas was uneventful. In the management of his private fortune, in constant reading, and in the out-door exercises that had been his passion during the busiest part of his career, the days went by. He died on August 1st, 1877. The end came suddenly, though not without premonition, from heart failure. The funeral was a notable event in the history of the province. Especially striking were the tributes of the Indians to whom he was indeed the friend they held him. His wife was laid by his side in 1891. Before the day of his passing, Douglas had lived long enough to witness not a little of the growth which sprang directly from his sowing, and at least the promise of that greater fruitage which the future 310 ^ CONFEDERATION was to yield. It will be well, before attempting any final estimate of the man and his work, to turn for a moment to the more important of the developments that followed his retirement from public life and to the general course of progress since in British Columbia. On December 17th, 1867, the legislature of British Columbia assembled for the first time at Victoria. The influence of Seymour, who had succeeded to the governorship of the united colonies, had hitherto retained for New Westminster this coveted distinction. Having yielded in one matter, the governor and the opinion which he represented saw fit to bow to the majority in another and more important. No sooner had the confederation of the eastern colonies become an accomplished fact, than the admission of British Columbia to the Dominion of Canada was keenly debated. The governor opposed it. A small party which favoured annexation with the United States opposed it. The body of office-holders opposed it vigorously. At the first, the activity of these succeeded in shelving the question. Nevertheless, as early as March, 1868, a resolution passed the council in favour of the union, provided fair and equitable terms could be obtained. Public meetings at Victoria, Barkerville and other points, soon after gave solid endorsation to the project. The sympathy of the Dominion itself was obtained, with special reference to the taking over of the intervening territory. A confederation 311 rJil i * SIR JAMES DOUGLAS league was formed and a convention held under its auspices at Yale. Here, perhaps for the first time, the movement found its full voice, the existing form of government being denounced as a despotism for which the only remedy was asserted to be the immediate admission of British Columbia into the Dominion and the establishment of responsible institutions. But the most potent of all the arguments for union was the promise which it held out of promoting overland communication with Canada. This it was that finally silenced the opposition of Seymour. In any event, the death of the governor in 1869 led to the appointment of an avowed advocate of confederation, Anthony Musgrave, previously governor of Newfoundland, and with an experience of administration gained in the West Indies. A tour of the colony which the new officer immediately undertook confirmed the view that the overwhelming sentiment of the population was in favour of confederation. On the back of this came formal instructions from England that the governor should take such steps as he properly and constitutionally could, either in conjunction with the governor-general of Canada or otherwise, to promote the favourable consideration of the question. When the council, which had been reconstituted in 1869, met for the session of 1870, Musgrave had a series of resolutions prepared for its consideration. In a memorable debate 312 TERMS OF THE UNION which began on March 9th, 1870, and lasted until the twenty-fifth, the terms on which British Columbia should become a part of the Dominion were definitely determined. On July 7th, the news was received from Ottawa that the articles had been agreed upon, the construction of the transcontinental railway guaranteed, and the delegates who had been sent to present the claims of the province already on their way home. The provisions upon which British Columbia entered confederation ensured in the first place that the Dominion should assume all debts and liabilities of the colony, allowance being made for the small amount of these compared with the original indebtedness of the other provinces. For the support of the provincial government an annual subsidy of thirty-five thousand dollars, with an additional grant of eighty cents per head on an estimated population of sixty thousand was promised, the latter allowance to be increased pro rata until the population reached four hundred thousand. Canada was to defray all charges in respect to the salaries of the lieutenant-governor and of the judges of the Superior and County or District Courts—likewise of the department of customs, the postal and telegraph services, the fisheries, the militia, the geological survey, the penitentiary, the marine department, the care of the Indians and other matters appertaining to the general government. A fortnightly steam mail service between Victoria and San 313 - SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Francisco, and a weekly service with Olympia, were to be maintained by the Dominion. But the portion of the agreement which was of most absorbing interest to British Columbia, was that which set forth in detail the terms on which the railway across the continent, now the dream of every section of the community, should be built, and which provided in brief that it should unite the seaboard of British Columbia with the railway system of Canada and that its construction should be begun within two years of the date of union, the province conveying the necessary public lands along the line in trust to the Dominion government. The Dominion also guaranteed the interest for ten years on a maximum sum of £100,000 to be expended on the construction of a graving dock at Esquimalt. The new province was given three seats in the senate and six in the House of Commons. Finally, it was agreed that the constitution of the executive authority and of the legislature of British Columbia should continue until altered under the British North America Act, it being understood that the Dominion government would consent to the introduction of responsible government when desired by the people of British Columbia, and that it was the intention of the British Columbia government to amend the existing constitution of the legislature by providing that a majority of its members should be elective. The union was to take place on a date to be fixed by 314 REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS Her Majesty on addresses from the legislature of British Columbia and of the parliament of Canada, the former being granted leave to specify in its address the electoral districts for which the first election of members to serve in the House of Commons should take place. The document containing the terms of union reached Victoria on July 18th, 1870. Meantime a representative had been despatched to England to secure the needed change in the constitution of the colony and the guarantee of the imperial government for the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. For the election of the new council, which for the first time in the history of the united colonies was preponderatingly representative in character, the colony was divided into eight electoral districts, consisting of Victoria City, Victoria district, Nanaimo, New Westminster, Hope, Yale and Lytton, Lillooet and Clinton, and Cariboo and Kootenay. Of these, Victoria city returned two members. The elections were held in November, and the council met in January, 1871. The chief work of the session was, of course, the ratification of the terms of union previously agreed upon. This done, an Act was passed abolishing the council and establishing a legislative assembly in its stead, the latter to be elected once in every four years and to consist of twenty-four members chosen by twelve electoral districts. Thus it was effected that responsible government should come into operation at the 815 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS first session of the legislature subsequent to the union with Canada. A Qualification and Franchise Act was passed and the council prorogued on March 28th. On the same date, the resolutions for the admission of the colony were moved in the Canadian House of Commons, and, after a four days' discussion, were adopted. On July 1st, 1871, the first Dominion Day was celebrated in British Columbia. On the whole, the new province brought to the Dominion a dower of no ordinary richness in the way of accomplished development and of promising outlook for the future. From the lavish expenditures of the early years a system of retrenchment and economy had been evolved, while the permanent results of these expenditures remained. Roads had been opened. Agriculture had been planted; it was estimated that not less than one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres, valued at from two dollars and a half to five dollars per acre, were available for cultivation. The mining industry of the province was already famous throughout the world, while it was known that not a tithe of its richness had been revealed. Even manufactures were assuming importance. Trade had reached a volume of over $3,400,000 a year. The labour market was in a promising condition, unskilled workmen being in good demand at wages of two dollars and a half per day and upward. The Indian question had been placed on a satisfactory basis. The Hon. J. W. 316 THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY Trutch, distinguished for many years past in the councils of the colony, became the first lieutenant- governor, under auspices that promised to the mind of every inhabitant the beginning of a golden era for the province. But the union could not be real to British Columbia until the railway—the tie on which so much depended—was at least in visible process of realization. In this, a grievous disappointment awaited the province. For a decade and a half the delay in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was the leading topic in political, industrial and commercial circles throughout British Columbia. A reference to this phase in the development of the province is necessary to complete the record of confederation. As early as 1858, when the discovery of the gold- fields of the Fraser made the value of the country known, the ambition of Great Britain to see planted a chain of colonies which should cross the continent, bound by a single chain of railways, from Nova Scotia to the Pacific, was formally acknowledged. For ten years more, however, the enormous difficulties, both of finance and of engineering, prevented serious consideration of the project, and it was not until the explorations of Viscount Milton in the Rocky Mountains and the unceasing agitation of Mr. Alfred Waddington had awakened public interest, that the undertaking may be said to have 317 *w*~~ 1 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS been brought within the realm even of the remotely practicable. In September, 1869, the Canada Gazette contained a notice that application would be made at the ensuing session of parliament for a charter to build a railway from the Canadian system to the foot of the Rockies; but this was later acknowledged to have been only a part of the campaign for the creation of an intelligent public opinion on the subject. By 1870, however, such measures were no longer necessary, the desirability of the railway being no longer questioned, and the proposition for its construction having been accepted, in the way that has been described, as an integral part of the bargain between British Columbia and the Dominion. The line, it had already come to be recognized, was almost as necessary to the one as to the other; for if British Columbia was thought to profit more immediately by its construction, and in the discussions on the subject bore always the aggressive part, an outlet to the unoccupied territory of the West was no less an urgent need to Canada if she was to prevent her surplus population from continually overflowing into the United States, and if in process of time she was to be assured of an expanding market for her produce. But the signing of the articles of union did not by any means allay the almost universal feeling of distrust, not to say of alarm, with which the project had been regarded from the first in Canada. To the 318 .«*■ DELAY IN CONSTRUCTION majority it seemed indeed that the Dominion had essayed a task that was impossible. The feeling was reflected in parliament where, in spite of the strength of the government of the day, the confederation measure passed with difficulty and only on the promise that the undertaking would be left to private enterprise without involving further additions to the taxation of the country. This in itself was a blow to the expectations of the people of British Columbia; for it was clear that the enormous expenses of construction and the scanty earnings that could be counted upon for many years in the service of so small and scattered a population would prove but an indifferent attraction to capital. As a matter of fact, the limit specified at confederation for the beginning of the work, July 1st, 1873, expired before even the surveys had been more than started. The tangled skein of the dispute which forthwith arose between the province and the Dominion, it is unnecessary here to unravel. Throughout its continuance no real desire was apparent on the part of British Columbia, if we pierce below the surface, to exact the full legal penalty of a compact proved by time and circumstances to be unjust. She had been led, however, to regard the railway as the chief condition of the union, and the railway she was determined should be built. If her attitude was local and colonial rather than federal and Canadian, it must be remembered that her assimilation with 319 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the Dominion was the very point at issue. The charge of breach of faith preferred by the province was the subject of prolonged negotiations. After a lengthy war by correspondence, Mr. J. D. Edgar, afterwards Sir James Edgar, was despatched in the spring of 1874 as a special agent of the Dominion to Victoria. The result was but to bring the differences to a head, in the form of an appeal by the province to the British government. The construction of two rival lines, the Northern and the Union Pacific, in the United States, added fuel to the discontent. The award which followed, known as the Carnarvon terms, was distinctly favourable to British Columbia, in so far that it ensured the building of the road, though it recognized that the letter of the original agreement could not possibly be carried out. The award required that two million dollars should be spent each year on the construction of the road within the province from the time the surveys were completed, the latter to be pushed at once with all possible vigour; that the railway should be completed and opened for traffic between Lake Superior and the Pacific seaboard on or before December 31st, 1890; and that a telegraph line and certain wagon roads should be constructed forthwith. At the outset, it should be stated, an Act had passed the Dominion parliament granting a subsidy of thirty million dollars together with fifty million acres of land for the construction of a railway 320 am THE CARNARVON TERMS from Lake Nipissing to the Pacific, and a charter had been awarded to a company organized under the leadership of Sir Hugh Allan. The episode familiarly known as the Pacific scandal had followed, and the company, finding it impossible to raise the needed capital, went out of existence. Mackenzie, on succeeding to the chaos which followed the resignation of Sir John Macdonald's ministry, having failed in the attempt to treat directly with the provincial authorities and having sought in vain to purchase calm by the passage of a new Pacific Railway Bill in 1874, found even in the terms of the Carnarvon settlement an unexpected difficulty. In addition to the provisions referred to, the award required the construction by the Dominion with all possible despatch of a line from Esquimalt to Nanaimo, the building of this road having been offered by the previous government to the province by way of offset for the delay which had occurred in the carrying out of the terms of the union. A bill which incorporated this feature of the award was passed by the House of Commons, but was rejected by the senate on the ground that the terms of union did not call for any extension of the line to Vancouver Island, and that, if the extension were considered in the light of compensation, it was on altogether too extravagant a scale. The entire question was thus thrown open anew to discussion, and the negotiations which ensued served 321 , ■1 I ill SIR JAMES DOUGLAS B but to widen the breach between the governments. From the standpoint of British Columbia, the attitude of the Dominion was now in open disregard of the Carnarvon terms, as it had previously been at variance with the articles of union. By 1876, neither the mainland nor the island road had been begun, nor had the agreement relating to the provincial section of the telegraph been carried out, nor had a commencement been made of the wagon road intended to facilitate the work of construction proper. Widespread depression in trade, it was claimed, had followed these delays, and the development of the country had been greatly retarded. On the other hand, the Mackenzie government now protested vigorously against the selection, agreed to by its predecessor, of Esquimalt as the terminus, a choice involving an expenditure of seven millions and a half on Vancouver Island, with a bridge across the narrows estimated to cost twenty millions more. It was willing to offer seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or about seventy-five dollars per capita of the white population of the province, as indemnity for the delay; but this had been refused. Moreover, during the first four years of union, the Dominion had expended in British Columbia twelve hundred thousand dollars more than had been derived from the province in revenue, though undoubtedly a large portion of this was incidental merely to 322 AN ARRANGEMENT REACHED the extension of confederation over the new territory. While the controversy continued thus, with secession openly in prospect, Lord Dufferin, the governor-general of Canada, paid a visit to the new province, which, while failing of its avowed object of reconciling the discordant elements, succeeded through his tact and adroitness in allaying much of the irritation with which the subject had by this time come to be associated and which in itself formed no small obstacle to an agreement. Nevertheless, for two years longer, though the surveys were actively prosecuted, not only was nothing done on the actual construction of the line, but tenders were not even invited. In September, 1878, accordingly, a formal threat of separation was made by the British Columbia legislature. Annexation with the United States again became a subject of discussion in certain quarters; and there was general discontent and demoralization. On the change of ministry at Ottawa, however, more conciliatory counsels were adopted; surveys were rapidly completed; Port Moody on Burrard Inlet was finally selected as the terminus; and by 1880 all was in readiness for the fulfilment of the railway clauses of the union. This had its due effect in British Columbia. In 1881, the conveyance of twenty miles on either side of the line to the Dominion was authorized, and with the passing, on March 25th, of an Act providing 323 ill SIR JAMES DOUGLAS that the Supreme Court of Canada and the Exchequer Court or the Supreme Court of Canada alone (according to the provisions of the Act of Parliament of Canada known as the Supreme and Exchequer Court Act) should have jurisdiction in controversies between the Dominion and the province, the actual union of the province and the Dominion may be said to have been consummated. The province continued to press in London for permission to collect its own tariff of customs and excise until through communication should be established with the eastern provinces; but the plea fell now on deaf ears and after a brief agitation was allowed to die. From this time forward the railway made rapid progress. It had been decided, in 1878, that the route should follow the valleys of the Fraser and the Thompson. By 1880, when some sixteen and a half millions had been expended on surveys and construction as a whole, Sir John Macdonald announced the formation of a syndicate by whom the work would be completed. The Dominion, under the contract, agreed to build the portion of the road between Yale and Kamloops by the end of June, 1885, and that between Port Moody and Yale by June 1st, 1891. All was finally laid at rest between the governments by the Settlement Act of 1884. Of the various terms of the agreement and of the manner in which its provisions were carried 324 UMMlMllimiw "^M1W»WWIHI HBWPW DIFFICULTIES OF CONSTRUCTION out in the sections east of the Rocky Mountains, no further mention is necessary here. Of the work within the boundaries of British Columbia, however, the completion of which may be said to have marked an epoch in railway construction as well as in the history of the province, the more extraordinary features may be noted. Between Kamloops Lake and Burrard Inlet, where the road descends the canyons of the Thompson and Fraser, the contracts were undertaken at a cost approximating twelve million dollars, apart from rails and fastenings. Ground was broken early in 1880. On portions of the road it is probable that the difficulties were greater than had ever before been encountered in railway building, except perhaps in Switzerland and Peru. The cost per mile over a considerable section averaged eighty thousand dollars; in certain parts as much as two hundred thousand dollars per mile was expended. In nineteen miles near Yale, thirteen tunnels occur. Elsewhere in the Fraser canyons the roadway was literally hewn from the rock, men being lowered hundreds of feet down the face of the precipice to blast a foothold. At times over seven thousand labourers were employed, though the average was nearer four thousand. The enormous difficulties of forwarding supplies and material were overcome with no less marvellous skill. Even the rapids of the Fraser were breasted by a steamer built for the purpose. In the section of the railway which traverses the 325 . i if SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Rocky Mountains, scarcely less astounding feats of engineering were required. By 1884, the track had been laid from Winnipeg to the summit of the Rockies, though there was still a gap of two hundred miles between that point and Kamloops. But the end was soon to crown the work. On November 7th, 1885, five years before the date required by the Carnarvon terms, the final rail was laid. The last spike was driven by Mr. Donald A. Smith, now Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, a leading director of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and, by a fitting coincidence, the chief representative of the great fur-trading enterprise whose men had been the first to enter the Pacific slope. It was a grave moment in the history of Canada and the British Empire. Henceforward east was west and west was east in British North America, as nearly as the hand of man could accomplish it. The gateway to the Orient had been opened at last by land. How, on commercial grounds alone—though these were not its basis—the undertaking begun amid so many doubts and fears has justified the vision of its founders, is among the trite lessons of our history. In the creation of the prosperous city of Vancouver, to-day one of the leading centres of industry in Canada, entrep6t of a trade that reaches to the ends of the earth, with clearings of over two hundred million dollars, employing a tonnage of nearly thirteen millions, and already numbering over seventy thousand inhabitants, where a quarter of a 326 g|^m«lMM<W'l«*W*iM^lWHlM'IJ^J.^J^^ RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT century ago was virgin forest, may be seen a typical instance of what that great enterprise has accomplished for the province and for Canada. It will be of interest to notice here the further steps that have been taken to open up the province by means of railways. That Port Moody was selected by the Dominion as the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway largely because it rendered unnecessary the construction of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo line as a condition of the union with British Columbia, there can be no doubt. The effect was long felt by Victoria and Vancouver Island. In 1883, however, a contract was entered into with another agency for the construction of the line in question, the work to be begun at once and to be finished by 1887. Thus, with only a slight delay, the island was provided with a railway throughout its most thickly peopled districts, and the line by a recent purchase forms part of the system of the Canadian Pacific. Even before the projection of this undertaking, the New Westminster and Port Moody, the Fraser River, and the Columbia and Kootenay Railway Companies, had been incorporated. The last, which provided entrance to the Kootenay district from the north, became in time a part of the important system built westward by the Canadian Pacific Company from the prairie section through the Crow's Nest Pass, opening up a country whose marvellous wealth in coal and mineral is now known 327 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS throughout the world. Meanwhile the Great Northern Railway has crossed the border from the state of Washington, connecting Vancouver with the railways of the United States and promising soon to establish another and much needed outlet from the Kootenays westward to the coast. But these results, substantial as they are, form but an earnest of the progress which the immediate future holds, when, to mention only the greatest of several lines that are projected, a second and even a third road from Canada, piercing the mountains of Cariboo and Cassiar, shall cross the province three hundred miles to the northward of the Canadian Pacific Railway and awaken those primeval solitudes to settled industry. As an interesting note to the foregoing, it may be stated that the system of roads and trails begun by Douglas, and built and maintained by the government, amounted in 1900 to a total of over ten thousand miles. Iff The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway marks from many points of view the beginning of a new era in the development of British Columbia— so far-reaching was its effect in affording transport for the growing industries of the province and in bringing the country into touch with the outside world. From a population of 36,241 in the year of confederation, grown to 49,459 in the decade following, the province had become a community of 178,657 souls in 1900, the date of the last Dominion 328 i Bi iw& WBmmmammm nnHi i ■BBHOIB AGRICULTURE census, while the revenue has reached an estimated total of $3,286,476 for the fiscal year of 1908, and the import and export trade a total of approximately $40,000,000. A very brief indication of the economic and industrial progress reflected in these returns, and appropriate in the case of a community whose history from the outset is primarily a study in industrial development, is all that may be attempted in this restricted space. Agriculture, until recent years, cannot be said to have attained importance as an industry in British Columbia, though progress relatively has been very rapid. In the decade of 1890-1900, the agricultural area of the province increased, according to the Dominion census, from 115,184 to 171,447 acres, the latter representing a total value in agricultural property of $33,491,978.« This is less than one per cent, of the entire area of the province, and the returns do not enter into comparison with those of Ontario and the north-west provinces. The reason is to be sought in the heavily timbered nature of the valleys, which, notwithstanding their fertility, require capital for development in all but a few sections, whereas the neighbouring prairies of the north-west provinces have offered no resistance of this kind, and have naturally been occupied more rapidly. Large areas of British Columbia will be available for agriculture only on the introduction of irrigation. Hard wheat, moreover, is not grown in the portions of the province as yet devoted to 329 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS agriculture. The advantages of the British Columbia climate, however, have given a special impetus to fruit growing, and the orchards of Okanagan are already known in the leading markets of the world, not only for the quality of the fruit but for the enterprise and skill of the grower. In 1901, there were 7,430 acres in orchards, with some 650,000 trees; in 1906 there were 40,000 acres with 2,700,- 000 trees. Dairying and cattle raising also are, by every indication, on the eve of an important future, the present year exceeding any previous record in the quantity and quality of the output. In 1900 there were seven cheese and butter factories in operation; in 1906 there were nineteen. There are ranches in British Columbia carrying ten and fifteen thousand cattle, but the tendency is to break up these larger holdings into farms. Legislation has kept pace with these developments, the laws for the promotion of agricultural societies, Farmers' Institutes, Co-operative Associations, Dairying Associations, Boards of Horticulture, and various lands, drainage, animals and cattle Acts, being among the most advanced in the Dominion. The fisheries of British Columbia, once the almost sole support of the native population and no mean source of revenue to the Hudson's Bay Company, are now a household word throughout the world. Every species of salmon known to the Pacific abound in its waters—the sockeye, the spring, the cohoe, the humpback and the dog- 330 THE FISHERIES salmon. The taking and preserving of these fish has grown into the most distinctive, if not the greatest, industry of the province. The mysterious four years' absence of the sockeyes in the depths of the Pacific, the teeming millions in which they return to spawn and to die in the streams that gave them birth, and the unique methods of capture and manufacture, are familiar features. In 1897 and 1901, the two most productive years on record, no less than 1,026,545 and 1,247,212 cases of salmon were put up in British Columbia. From 4,000 to 20,000 men are employed in the industry, according to the season. Unfortunately, the province is unable to reap the whole of the magnificent harvest which her rivers yield. On their return from the sea, the sockeyes pass for many miles along the shores and islands of the United States, where they are taken without let or hindrance by the canners of Puget Sound, who annually secure a larger pack than British Columbia herself and render any attempt at preservation or regulation extremely difficult. But the salmon is not the only food fish of British Columbia. Halibut and herring yield an increasing return, the latter under methods which promise a prosperous future. Whale fishing, which in early days found the Sandwich Islands the most convenient centre, has assumed great importance within the past two years off Vancouver Island. For many years, also, Victoria has been the headquarters of the sealing fleet 331 i I SIR JAMES DOUGLAS of Canada in the Northern Pacific, which yields a considerable, though steadily decreasing, return. From the pigmy efforts of the Hudson's Bay Company in the sawing and marketing of lumber, dependent almost wholly upon the demands of the Russian and Northern Pacific trade, has sprung up an industry that produces hundreds of millions of feet annually and extends to Europe, Asia, and South America, as well as meeting the enormously increased demand arising from the settlement of the Canadian prairies. Possessing perhaps the greatest compact area of merchantable timber on the North American continent, the province, in the face of the general depletion, holds her forest wealth as second only to her mines among her great natural resources, if the extraordinary trade of 1906 and 1907 has not advanced it to the premier place. Apart from its abundance, the magnificence of the growth attained by the Douglas fir and the giant cedars of Vancouver Island give an added value to the product, trees of eight, ten and eleven feet diameter and three hundred feet in height, being not infrequently found. Fires have occasioned an enormous and deplorable waste, especially in the interior of the province beyond the humid influence of the ocean; but in this as in other respects the policy of the government has been enlightened, and under an improved system of protection losses were never so small as at present. What the general progress of 332 ■■^■^■■■■■■l^mgl^BMW——kliiBViLL M ..ii.'«il^^Jg-y..i&*rjfc-g^^vhw-^-V.^-.^^^■^,l^in-An-1^^!^!!^^^^ LUMBERING AND MINING the industry has been, may be judged from the fact that in 1888, the first year for which official statistics are available, the number of mills in operation was twenty-five, and the total cut 31,868,884 feet; whereas in 1902 the number of mills had increased to one hundred and five, and the annual cut to 281,945,866 feet, figures which have been nearly doubled since the rapid settlement of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta has created a new and, for many years to come, a heavy market for the products of the British Columbia forests. Up to confederation it was estimated that the entire cut of the colony had not exceeded two hundred and fifty million feet. Meanwhile, the manufacture of shingles has frequently reached half a billion yearly, and the fleet required to transport the growing output to the foreign market has been multiplied by several times. But the leading asset of British Columbia has, from the moment of her birth in 1858, been looked for in her wealth in mineral. The beginning of the mining industry has been already described. It may be said that in so far as placer mining is concerned, the year 1863, with its total output of nearly four millions in gold, has remained the highest point to which production has attained. Yet Cariboo in 1900 was still yielding $700,000, the new Atlin district of the far north-west being the other leading producer with a total of over $400,000. But the days of the rocker and the sluice have 333 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS forever passed away, and the hope of the future in these fields is in the great hydraulic processes, established at enormous cost, which have already been installed on the scenes of the excitement of 1860-5. The placers, however, now yield but a small part of the annual harvest of mineral in British Columbia. Metalliferous lode mining, which can scarcely be said to have been followed before 1891, and which now yields from the mines of the Rossland, the Nelson, the Slocan and the Boundary camps alone an annual product valued at $14,000,- 000, has become the great and foremost industry of the province. In coal mining, the small beginning of the Hudson's Bay Company on Vancouver Island which has been duly noted and which in 1861 passed under the control of the " Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company," has grown from year to year until an annual production of over a million and a half tons has been reached. In addition, the fields of the Crow's Nest Pass began shipping in 1898, and have now a daily capacity of four thousand tons, with almost unlimited resources in areas to draw upon and markets to supply. Legislation of an enlightened character has accompanied this great development. In 1877, child and female labour underground in coal mines was forbidden, and in a series of enactments since, the safety of employees has been guarded by every means suggested by experience. The latest of these enforce the eight hour day in the coal mines, 334 INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS metalliferous mines and smelters throughout the province. If manufacturing has had less incentive to growth than the sister industries, the progress made is far from inconsiderable. In 1901 the Dominion census showed a capital of $22,901,892 invested in manufacturing in British Columbia, a total which places the province fourth, after Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, in Canada. The session of the legislature of 1908 has placed a Factories Act upon the statute-book that constitutes perhaps the most advanced legislation of the kind in Canada to-day. Industrial problems of no mean order have followed in the wake of this remarkable and steady progress. In general, they have been those familiar in communities where placer-gold or other great natural resources are free to all. The spirit of buoyancy, natural to a new and vigorous community, is still reflected in the high prices of commodities and in the high wages and shorter hours which widespread organization has been able to obtain for labour. Population is less fixed than in older Canada, and there is less of settled order in the general industrial life. Nowhere in Canada have industrial disputes been waged with greater bitterness and violence than in British Columbia. This, however, is but to say that the province, in spite of its substantial achievements, is still in its infancy as an industrial community, and that the impulse which it obeys is western. 335 '" SIR JAMES DOUGLAS The problem of Oriental labour is shared with the rest of the Pacific coast. From the days of the first rush of gold-seekers into the Fraser Valley, the Chinese have been in the province. The first official reference to their presence is found, in 1859, in a report of the assistant gold commissioner of the district of Lytton, which was thought of sufficient importance to warrant transmission to the colonial office. The first detachment numbered in the neighbourhood of thirty. Trouble followed almost immediately in their wake. The supplying of liquor to the savages by the whites soon found a dangerous counterpart in their being furnished with arms and ammunition by the Chinese, and when the miners drove the latter away the result was to arouse the open hostility of the Indians. The Chinese were present in considerable numbers in the opening up of Cariboo, working by their patient effort claims that the white miner passed over in contempt. By 1881, they numbered 4,383. The period of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway followed, and by 1891 there were 9,129 Chinese in Canada. But the heaviest influx began in 1895, between which year and 1898 the average immigration of Chinese amounted to 2,100 yearly. By 1901, the total had reached 16,792, of whom 14,376 according to incomplete returns, remained in British Columbia. A capitation tax of $50, later raised to $100, proved ineffectual to stem the tide. The highest point of the movement was reached in 1900 336 ORIENTAL IMMIGRATION when over six thousand Mongolians landed in British Columbia between the months of January and April alone. Thereupon a Royal Commission of enquiry was appointed by the Dominion government, in reply to a petition of the province, on whose recommendation the capitation tax was raised to $500, since when the inflow has, until quite recently, wholly ceased. The immigrants are of the coolie class entirely, and though not criminal are incapable of assimilation, and live without family life in overcrowded and unsanitary communities. The verdict of the province at large is for the careful regulation of the whole movement, though by the employers of labour, especially those engaged in the extensive works that accompany the development of a new country, the cheap but inferior services of the Chinese are in demand. The question of Japanese immigration has arisen almost wholly in the past decade. It may be said to have reached its solution within the past year as the result of a special mission to Japan of the Minister of Labour for Canada. Still more recently the movement from India has been restricted under an arrangement concluded by the Deputy Minister of Labour with the government of Great Britain. In this review of purely material progress no mention has been made of the background of provincial politics against which it has been carried out. The truth is that the annals of political controversy in British Columbia are not of widespread 337 t SIR JAMES DOUGLAS interest. As in the days of Douglas, the issues that have arisen have been of practical administration almost wholly. For that reason, possibly, a lack of leadership or even of constructive party organization (marked contrast with the period of Douglas!) has been a feature of the politics of British Columbia. As already mentioned, the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway furnished matter for the politicians of a decade, and the local issues which arose in conjunction with the controversy with the Dominion were not always worthy of remembrance. Yet some exceedingly useful legislation has been enacted, and in many respects the way has been shown to the older provinces. Even in the days of conflict with the Dominion over the terms of union, sufficient respite was obtained to allow the original restrictions on the suffrage to be abolished by a series of Acts dealing with qualification and registration. After this, attention was paid to municipal affairs, the administration of justice, the providing of a revenue, the improvement of communications, the establishment of a lands policy, and other matters of vital import to the development of the province. Education may well demand a statement to itself. A beginning, as we know, was made in the Crown colony of Vancouver Island in the public schools which were opened by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1855, with the Rev. Edward Cridge, the clergyman of the company, as the first honor- 338 ^MWI4WMWlM':il4JUi,JflJ^WMliiiiAtKli».«llWWM Tin EDUCATION ary superintendent of education. Ten years afterwards, in 1865, a free school system was established by the island assembly; but the population of the mainland was still too sparse to admit of any regular and organized system. Even on Vancouver Island the cost of schools did not exceed $10,000 per annum (the average pay of teachers being $65.00 per month) and six of the eleven schools established in 1865 had been forced by 1867 to discontinue for lack of funds. By 1869, when the united colonies passed legislation on the subject, there were still only twelve schools in existence, seven being on the island, while of a school population estimated at two thousand, only three hundred and fifty were at school. Teachers were appointed without examination, and there was no inspection. The end of this disorganized and inefficient system came with the Act of 1872, based largely on the Ontario Act of 1846, but modified to suit the immense area of the province and the scattered nature of the population. Under the improved conditions which immediately followed, by 1874 there were over 1,200 names on the various registers. By 1875 these had risen to 1,685, the number of schools being forty-five and of teachers fifty. At present the roll is over 78,000. The consolidated Public School Act of 1876, the Public School Act of 1879, and further amendments and consolidations in 1885 and 1891 are later milestones in the progress of education in the 339 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS province. The Victoria High School dates from 1876, and those of New Westminster, Nanaimo and Vancouver from 1884, 1886 and 1890, respectively. The crowning point of the system may be said to have been reached in 1906 with the establishment of the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in British Columbia, in close affiliation with one of the greatest of the universities of older Canada, and with the passing of an Act in 1907 whereby the University of British Columbia, first projected in 1891, was granted a reservation of provincial lands for use at such time as it might be thought desirable to proceed with its organization. In 1908 that organization was finally perfected under special Act of the session. Two important matters remain to be mentioned in both of which the interests of the province were primarily concerned, though the questions, being international in scope, were dealt with by Great Britain and the Dominion. These were the controversies concerning jurisdiction in Behring Sea and with regard to the location of the Alaskan boundary. The former arose from the attempt of the United States to make of Behring Sea a mare clausum under the terms of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Relying on her interpretation of the Russian agreements, seizures of a number of Canadian vessels found sealing within those waters were made by the United States in 1886, 1888 and 1889. On the 340 ^^^^^P^^P|HHH^HHHn|^^^^^^^^ THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY protest of Great Britain, the dispute was referred to arbitration, and the award declared the seizures to be unlawful, Russia having been proved never to have made good her claim that the sea between Alaska and Siberia was hers alone and not a part of the great Pacific. The dispute concerning the Alaskan boundary had been in progress for several years, and a joint commission to locate the boundary had conducted surveys during 1893-4. Here again the controversy proper was one involving the interpretation of the convention between Great Britain and Russia in 1825. Did the line determining the thirty miles of lisiere provided for by the treaty go around the inlets and interior waters of the coast (including the Lynn Canal concerning which the widest divergence of views occurred and to which the events arising out of the Yukon gold discoveries gave special prominence); or should it pass along the summits of the mountain range nearest the shore line, crossing all narrower waters? The decision of 1903, arrived at after negotiations lasting many months, and yielding nearly all to the United States, still smoulders with the dissatisfaction which it aroused in Canada. Nevertheless, with the confidence born of power, the ending of uncertainty has been accepted as a gain in British Columbia, and the province is now enabled to bend her energies, without disquietude as without vain regrets, to the splendid tasks of the future. 341 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS How, then, shall we of the present, looking before and after, with knowledge of events of half a century, pass judgment on James Douglas, the man whose work and character make up the early history of a region so great in itself (as time has but begun to prove) and doubly great because it brings to our people a share in the mighty destinies of the Pacific? Let us begin with a definition. Let us recall the scale on which he wrought and something of the essential nature of his task, and so preserve our sense of proportion. It was not what one would call a great scale; it was not, by several standards, a great task. We are apt to be confused by the vast- ness of the raw materials of statehood which passed through his hands, and so forget the smallness of the human part in its beginning, the few points at which it touched its immense background of nature, and the simple and elementary character of the polity which first arose. Far off and isolated as the colony was, and closely guarded by the sovereign power, here were no problems, save at widest intervals, touching the rival interests of nations; to make the obvious comparison with the eastern colonies, there was here no feud of ruling races to allay, no Family Compact to uproot, no Clergy Reserve to divide, no complicated fiscal policy to arrange. If difficulties such as these arose, even in rudimentary form, they were settled apart from Douglas, or their settlement deferred. He antedated 342 RrFTTffl £g3gg*«g3ttgj^ THE NATURE OF HIS TASK the real political development of British Columbia, and he dealt with no inherited conditions. The truth is, he was almost wholly an administrator. Risen to be the leader of the great commercial enterprise which had thrust its roots so deeply into that virgin soil, the process of events which made him ruler under the Crown in British Columbia was, when all is said, a change of masters primarily. While varying the ends to be attained, and the means with which to secure them, it made no vital alteration in those methods and principles by which he had been wont to govern all his actions. The establishment of discipline and order among the miners of the Fraser valley, the framing of the rules by which the single occupation of the inhabitants might be carried on, the building of roads, the founding of cities, the financing of the system as a whole—such were his practical cares. It was as if some huge and novel enterprise, reared upon the basis of a past that had vanished as if at a word, were placed for its development in his charge, his powers unlimited in all the multifarious concerns of management, but subject in their larger action to the plans, the policy and the approval of its original creator. The difficulties and responsibilities of his position were indeed very great; had they fallen into hands less competent, had they fallen even into other hands at all, it might almost be said they would have carried confusion if not disaster to the colony. Yet with it all 343 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the work of Douglas was that of a builder and organizer, not that of an architect and creator in the fashioning of British Columbia. We will do well, then, to remember that of statesmanship in the broad and usual sense the career of Douglas does not furnish an example. How, in truth, should he have been a statesman? From the days of his youth he had had to deal with naked fact—with the struggle first for bare existence, and later with the fierce and merciless rivalry against which he had fought his way, step by step and with a stern enjoyment, until he stood free and in full mastery of the huge concern to which he had bound his fortunes. Alert and studious as he was, there was still a great gulf fixed between a training such as that and an apprenticeship to liberal statecraft. Moreover, to repeat, it was not to the exercise of statecraft he was called. In the emergency of 1858, Douglas had qualities of a value to the country greater than any working knowledge of the principles of constitutionalism. From the school of forty years' service in the Hudson's Bay Company he had derived an experience—minute as it was comprehensive, and wholly without parallel on the north-west coast—of every problem of the British Columbia wilderness. That stern devotion to his duty, that perfection of the organizing faculty, and that absolute mastery of detail which at all times characterized the mind of Douglas, were a part of what the company had 344 m ■naawwmiwiifflPP" w,M^*ll^'''li'illMinffli'* i^-^vMgng&Kgggaak^ ^WMBBB HIS PERSONAL GIFTS taught him. Gifts wholly personal were his tact, his resourcefulness, his judgment, and the firmness with which he could enforce his decisions. Above all, he had the power, both by nature and by training, of ruling men. He was the one man of his time and place of whom as much could be said. If, therefore, we shall find him often wrong in matters that lay beyond his experience—narrow in his attitude toward the foreigner, the British policy of no discrimination being for long beyond his grasp; prone to precipitation in certain phases of the affair of San Juan; mistrustful ever of popular government (being, to a degree beyond that of the ordinary idealist, a believer in benevolent despotism); opposed even to confederation in his later years;—and while we shall have reason often to rejoice that the imperial curb was present in his administration; we shall never see him at a loss in any matter of the actual management of the colony or without the courage of his convictions when he felt himself on ground which was his own. And that is indeed to praise him greatly. Confronted with an inrush of the most adventurous and irresponsible classes in the world, rough and ungovernable when they were not vicious, owning no law or authority save that of their own rude customs, and powerful enough to sweep all before them had they willed, —the situation doubly embarrassed by the problem of the native races,—Douglas was able of his own prestige and personality, without jot or 345 <gr SIR JAMES DOUGLAS tittle of precedent whereon to base his action, to turn all to the upbuilding of the colony, establishing the law and sovereignty of Great Britain, firmly maintaining order, organizing the new community on terms that won the support and confidence, where they might have looked only for the enmity, of the wild and uncouth masses which made up the population, giving in short to the world at large the spectacle of a gold-field ruled as it was never ruled before, and laying the sure foundations of a greater community to be. This was the crowning achievement of Douglas carried out at no small sacrifice of his own ease and fortune; never may we cease to cherish appreciation of it. It is proper to add that no one was more conscious of his place in the political development of British Columbia than was Douglas himself. At sixty-one years old, in full possession of his powers, with an experience of the country greater than that of any other man, he chose to regard his public career as ended, rather than to launch upon that unknown sea on which the methods of all his past were to unlearn. For he was a product of the fur trade, first and always. He ruled the colony as he had ruled his company before. He could rule absolutely, but he could not govern. Thus let him stand, the greatest figure which the fur trade .of Canada ever gave to the order which came after it. It may be well to notice again, with this dominance of the Hudson's Bay Company over the mind 346 Mi DOUGLAS AND THE COMPANY of Douglas in view, a basis of attack that was once of frequent use in the hands of his enemies. He has been many times condemned in that, while governor of Vancouver Island and still in the chief command of the company, he did not scruple to turn his dual office to the sole advantage of the commercial enterprise. But this is surely to misread the situation. As a matter of fact, Douglas in his capacity of governor and chief factor in one was almost wholly the chief factor. It could not have been otherwise. The British government was fully cognizant and expected, probably, no more than that the arrangement should secure, during an unsettled and indeterminate interval, the recognition of the imperial authority as supreme. This it did. Even the illegal assumption of the control of the Fraser in 1858 tended to the imperial advantage, though the more immediate object was the benefit of the company. The subservience of the government's interests was further emphasized by the agreement which threw the expenses of administration upon the company. Anomalous as were the relations thus created, they may not improbably have saved the colony from greater evils. In any case the charge of subordinating the interests of government to those of the company so many times preferred by contemporary and later critics must be laid at the door of the system rather than of Douglas. In the mainland colony no bitterness from this cause arose. Notorious as was the singleness of pur- 347 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS pose with which the Honourable Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson Bay pursued its ends, and with which (so powerful was the influence of that life of isolation and grinding discipline) it was able to inspire its servants from the governor down, no serious charge of favouritism was ever brought home to Douglas once his relations with the company were severed and he had pledged himself to the sole service of the Crown. If he never ceased to regard the company with that exaggerated reverence which seems the inevitable result of having once risen in its service, this is only to say that the force of nature was too strong for him and that he could not rise superior to so subtle and oveiwhelming an influence. Upon the whole, however, if the testimony of his own age be sought, it is greatly in his favour. Of those whom he served, whether Crown or company, the approval was never-failing. He was indeed the most indefatigable, the most devoted, and the most efficient of executive officers. The confidence which the imperial government extended to him, in the almost absolute power which it placed in his hands, was of the highest of its kind. It is not essential that we should attempt to fuse the judgment of his other contemporaries. If he won favour from those he served, it was not at the expense of the mass of the people. Discontent among the miners was not always silent, nor did the attempt to levy tribute on their enterprise fail 348 — »■ BMM n HIS INFLUENCE WITH THE INDIANS to encounter fierce resistance; yet with the adoption of wiser counsels, as soon as he was free to do so, Douglas gained a unique place in the miner's heart for his even-handed justice and his strict protection of their interests. But greater far as an achievement was the hold which he secured and maintained upon the Indians. To the simple nature of the savage the gift of intuition has been added in unusual measure. No one more quickly recognizes weakness; no one is readier to acknowledge superiority. To win the Indian's confidence and obedience requires not only constant tact and care, it has need of a courage never known to waver and of a strict integrity of purpose as the guiding principle in every action. Especially was this the. case with the native races of British Columbia, who if less warlike than their kindred of the plains, ranked higher in all the moral qualities and were proverbial for their honesty, their hospitality and their chastity. Building upon the foundations which the Hudson's Bay Company had established in forty years of intercourse, Douglas attained much more than the usual influence of trader and friend. He became, as they called him, their father, to whom under the slow and crushing weight of the white invader they could look with the trustfulness of children to temper, if he could not turn aside, the bitterness of their fate. Thus by his personal authority he gained what under other circumstances might have cost the effusion of blood; and the colony saw SIR JAMES DOUGLAS none of the outrages that for years held the western states in terror. Fear may at the first have formed a portion of the awe which he inspired; but in the end it was the justice and the kindliness of the governor that won their confidence. By nature crafty and suspicious, keen to resent intrusion, and reticent of their strongest feeling, they never for an instant questioned the perfect ascendency which he had gained over their minds, even while they saw their lands despoiled before their eyes or snatched from their possession. Decimated though they had been by the vices and diseases of civilization, they were still in 1858, when they passed beneath the British Crown, at least as strong in numbers as the invaders who dispossessed them. To the man who by the patient work of years could hold in leash this formidable element, exasperated by a treatment which had often added insult to injury, the debt of the young community is not easily to be estimated. In person Sir James Douglas was not of the ordinary; the fact is of importance. It was a personal rule he bore. Six feet and more in height, but so well proportioned as not to seem beyond the usual stature, erect in carriage, muscular, measured and somewhat slow in his movements, yet natural and graceful withal, he was easily the most striking figure in the whole North-West. As he grew older, says Bancroft, the long face seemed to grow longer, the high forehead to grow 350 yyf-^i^gffnH?^.!*!iju|t^1iiti*!»|jj l«lfflMH«yA5inRfff DOUGLAS AND McLOUGHLIN still more massive and the large and clear-cut features to assume still bolder proportions, while the firm and earnest purpose of the eyes and mouth deepened into a seriousness akin to melancholy. In a London thoroughfare as in a Canadian forest, in a parliament of the nations as in a hut of the fur traders, he would have fixed attention. Linked with those outer traits were a reserve and dignity, amounting often to hauteur, which a life-time of command had made a part of the man. But the cold and stern demeanour, the slow, even lethargic, manner, the formal and exaggerated courtesy, the serious, not to say solemn, cast of thought, the product of a widely informed though not original mind, expressed in a weighty, if not grandiose, habit of speech, were tempered by a deep religiousness that breathed through all his actions and made him to those who could pierce the inscrutable exterior a revelation of sympathy and kindness. To the people whom he ruled he was the personification of justice clothed with power. In that wild unsettled time, so swayed by the obvious and instinctive, it was a happy setting for the qualities demanded in a governor. It has been the practice to compare him (not at all points to his advantage) with McLoughlin, the other leader which the fur trade bred on the Pacific slope; and the foil which the older man presents to the younger and, it may be said, the greater, has value of a striking kind in the at- 351 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS tempt to probe the inner recesses of the personality of Douglas. Fashioned by the same life and precepts, in the same iron mould of circumstance and environment, inseparably wedded to materialism, there was inevitably much of similarity in their character and in the manner in which they achieved their results. In bent of mind, in outward deportment, and in business methods, Douglas copied largely from his master. Each nature, however, had qualities which marked it sharply from the other. Temperamentally, McLoughlin was a Celt; Douglas was a Saxon. McLoughlin was quick, impulsive, intuitional; Douglas was methodical, conventional, exceedingly careful, and never to be hurried. Without the warmth, the artlessness, the spontaneity or the broad benevolence of McLoughlin, Douglas would win respect long before he touched the affections. It has been noted as a characteristic difference that McLoughlin could flatter, but that Douglas could not, though in diplomacy on a wider scale the latter was the superior. Magnanimous and forgetful of self, McLoughlin if he inspired fear and awe did so for his masters; when his company's interests clashed with his sense of humanity, it was the company and his own fortunes that had to suffer. Now Douglas would be a party to no disloyalty however virtuous; he never moved save toward success. That was his duty as he saw it, and to duty he could not be recreant. It is not that he ever failed 352 HfflHBIE^n BiifU'iT* I* BftM THE SUPREME VIRTUE in justice, or in kindness where it was deserved; but even righteousness and humanity were made to yield their profit. When McLoughlin fell, there was no quixotic devotion to him on the part of Douglas; he stepped into his place. If you were asked why he should not, you would be puzzled for an answer. You will never find Douglas in the wrong; he was without the weaknesses of which unworthiness is bred. His was a greater intellect than McLoughlin's, and he achieved a greater destiny. Neither ever did an ignoble act. Side by side, as in life, their names shall go down unsullied in the annals of the great northwest. It comes, therefore, in the end, as we search for the supreme virtue in the life and character of Douglas, to a recognition of his plain efficiency—that burning zeal, whatever the task in hand, to do it in the way that shall be best, with the sagacity to devise and the ability to carry out the measures adapted to this end. Being what he was, he would have risen to distinction, if not to greatness, anywhere. He had the key that opens every door, that of opportunity included. For how can opportunity be created by any man save by the preparedness and efficiency with which he faces the world? "A work is wanted to be done, and lo, the man to do it!" Difficult and unexampled as was the task of giving earliest form to British Columbia, 353 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS the country itself produced the man who carried it to a successful issue. The genius of Douglas was of our own western soil: let us remember that with just pride. Let it be thought of happy augury to the great province of the Pacific that in the most dubious hour of her history she found within herself the leadership that brought her to safety and enabled her to face her destiny unafraid. 354 Rffmnss INDEX ^IV I HBBB^BHBnBIEHBBSB INDEX Aberdeen, Earl of, 183 Addington, Henry, British comis- missioner in the Oregon boundary dispute, 154, 163 Agriculture, in British Columbia, 78, 113, 128, 129, 130, 131, 136, 185, 256, 316, 329 Alaska, trade with, 78. See also Russia Alaskan boundary question, the, 118, 283, 341 Alexandria, Fort, 98 Aliens, rights of, 244. See also Foreigners Allan, Sir Hugh, 321 Allarcon, explorer, 6 American Civil War, 281, 282 Amor de Cosmos, 271, 306-8 Anderson, A. C, 117, 120, 186, 217, 222 Annexation with United States, discussed, 311, 323 Anian, strait of, 2, 9, 15, 19 Antler Creek, 287 Ashburton, Lord, 156 Ashley, American trader, 134 Assembly, Vancouver Island, 208. See also Legislature Astor, John Jacob, 68 Astoria, 4, 64, 65, 71, 133, 148, 149, 150, 160, 161,163 Athabaska Pass, discovered, 58 Aurora claim, the, 287 B Babine, Fort, 98 Babines, the, an Indian tribe, 97 Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, Spanish discoverer, 5, 91 Bancroft, Herbert H., quoted, 105, 198, 283, 352 Baranoff, Alexander Andreyevitch, Russian governor, 43, 44, 45 Barkerville, 287 Baynes, Rear-Admiral, 245 Bear Lake, 104 Beaver, the, 178,179, 180, 181, 185 Beaver Harbour, 204 Begbie, Sir Matthew Baillie, judge of British Columbia, early life, appointed chief-justice of British Columbia and Vancouver Island in 1866, his work in the colony, 239; his journey to the Upper Fraser and his impressions, 254, 255; his stern and impartial justice, 255 Behring Sea dispute, the, 283, 340 Behring, Vitus, navigator, 39, 40 Billings, Joseph, 26 Blanshard, Richard, first governor of the colony, 199; his tenure of office, 203-5 Bodega y Quadra, see Quadra Bolduc, Jesuit missionary, 140,178, 179 Bonneville, American trader, 135 Boston, destruction of the, 37 357 dfT SIR JAMES DOUGLAS m Boundary, see Alaskan boundary, Oregon boundary, San Juan affair Bow River Pass, discovered, 58 Brew, Chartres, 239 Brigades, the, 82 British Columbia, origin of, 1; name, 57; organization, 229; constitution of colony, 231, 232; in 1858, 241, 242; dissatisfaction in, 289-95; wealth of, at Confederation, 316; later progress in, 311 et seq. Broughton, Lieutenant, explores the Columbia, 24, 34, 161 Buchanan, President, 156 Cabbillo, Spanish explorer, 6 Cadboro, the, 116, 180, 185, 188 Calhoun, represents the United States on the Oregon boundary question, 156, 164 California, coasted, 6, 7, 12, 15; garrisoned by Spain, 13; Russia in, 44; Hudson's Bay Company in, 125-7 Callicum, native chief, 27 Cameron, David, first chief-justice of the colony, 200, 217 Camosun, Indian village, 175, 176 Campbell, Archibald, United States commissioner on the Alaska boundary question, 278 Campbell, Robert, explorer, 123-5 Canada, cession of, 62 Canadian Pacific Railway, 313,315, 317-27 Canneries, the British Columbia, 331. See also Fishing 858 Canning, Stratford, represents Great Britain on the Oregon boundary dispute, 154 Capital of British Columbia, selection of, 246, 299, 300, 311 Cariboo, 254; gold discovered in, 271, 284-9, 298 Cariboo wagon road, the, 253 Carey, G. H., 239 Carnarvon terms, the, 320, 322 Carriers, the, 97 Carver, Jonathan, 19, 56 Cassiar, 286, 287 Castlereagh, Lord, 150 Cavendish, Sir Thomas, English sailor, 8 Cedar Creek, 286 Charles, William, 265 Chilcotin Indians, 97, 267 China, emporium for furs, 22; trade with, 70 Chinese, 291, 336, 337 Chinook jargon, the, 268 Clark, see Lewis and Clark Clatsop, Lewis and Clark at, 67 Clayoquot, 33 Clergy Reserves, 270, 271, 273, 274 Clover Point, 177 Coal mining, 78, 190, 334 Colnett, Captain, explorer, 22 Colonist, the, newspaper, founded, 271, 306, 308 Colonization, progress of, in America, 2, 12. See also Settlement, Immigration Columbia River, seen by Heceta, 14; discovered by Gray, 24; descended by Thompson, 58 Columbia, voyage of the, 23, 24 Colville, Fort, 116, 222 IPpHMIffllHUraBB INDEX Committee of House of Commons on Hudson's Bay Company, 201-3 Confederation, 311 et seq. Conolly, William, chief factor, 99 Conolly, Fort, 104 Constitution of British Columbia, 231 Contiguity, as a claim to sovereignty, 163 Convoy, the, 136 Cook, Captain James, English navigator, 14, 19; arrives on the north-west coast of North America (1778), 20; explores the coast from the 45th parallel to the Arctic Ocean, 20, 21; killed in the Sandwich Islands (1779), 21; mentioned, 50, 148, 160 Cook's Inlet, discovery of, 21 Cooper, James, 197, 204 Co-operation, in road building, 238, 250, 251 Coppermine River, discovered, 51 Coronada, Francisco Vasquez de, Spanish explorer, 7 Cortez, 6 Cosmos, Amor de, see Amor de Cosmos Cottonwood River, the, 287 Council, established on Vancouver Island, 204, 207; of British Columbia, established, 294; abolished, 315 Cowlitz River, agriculture on the, 130, 301 Council, legislative, of British Columbia, 231, 294 Couteau mines, the, 223 Cowichans, the, Indian tribe, 182 Crosby, Thomas, 270 Crown lands, 240, 291 Crow's Nest Pass coal mines, 334 Crow's Nest Pass Railway, 327 Cunningham Creek, 287 Currency, United States, legalized, 273 Customs duties, see Duties, Tariff, Taxation Cutler, American settler on San Juan, 280, 281 D Dairying, 330. See also Agriculture Dallas, A. G., son-in-law of Douglas and governor of the Hudson's Bay Company at Winnipeg, 103, 200; president of the Victoria board of management, 265 Dease, H.B.C. factor and explorer, 285 Dease, Fort, 124 Debt, colonial, 262, See also Finance Demers, Rev. Father, Jesuit missionary, 141, 269 Dene Indians, 97 Derby (New Langley), 246 Dewdney, E., minister of the interior for Canada and later lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, 252, 253 Dewdney trail, the, 253 Discovery, as a claim to sovereignty, 159, 160 Dixon, Captain, fur trader, 22 Douglas, Sir James, his place in western history, 84-6; characteristics, 87-9; birth, parentage and education, 91-3; joins the North- 359 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS West Company, 93-4; in New Caledonia, 96, 99, 100-9; his marriage, 103; is sent to Fort Vancouver, 110, 112, 113; activities there, 121-2; in California, 126; succeeds McLoughlin, 144; founds Victoria, 175-80; removes to Victoria, 188; his relations with Blanshard, 203; appointed governor of Vancouver Island, 205; nature of his rule, 207-8; summons a legislature, 209; his inaugural speech, 211-16; administration of justice, 218; his reports on gold discoveries, 219,220,222, 223, 228; his relations with the miners, 226; visits the Fraser, 227; appointed governor of British Columbia, 229, 230; his powers, 231, 234, 235; appointments, 240; second visit to the Fraser, 243, 244; sworn in as governor, 245, 246; builds the first trail to the diggings, 249-52; subsequent roads, 252-4; third visit to the Fraser, 256, 257; his financial policy, 258-62; his attitude to the Hudson's Bay Company, 263, 264, 346-8; his disputes with the Vancouver Island assembly, 272, 273; the San Juan affair, 275-83; retires as governor of Vancouver Island, 289; dissatisfaction with dual governorship, 289, 290; his views on representative government for British Columbia, 292-4; opens the British Columbia assembly, 296; retires from gover- norship of British Columbia, 300-7; visits Europe, 308-&; Jhis death, 360 310; review of his work and character, 342-54 Douglas, Captain William, 27, 28 Douglas fir, the, 332 Drake, Sir Francis, 7, 8, 16, 147 Dufferin, Lord, 323 Duncan, Captain, 22 Duncan, William, Church of England missionary, 270 Dunn, John, 117 Durham, Fort, 122 Duties, import, 232, 291 E Edgar, Sib James, 320 Edinburgh Review, the, on Oregon, 170 Education, 215, 271, 296, 338, 339 Election, first, on Vancouver Island, 210, 274 Electoral districts, B.C., 315 Elisa, Spanish explorer, his attempt to explore the strait of Juan de Fuca, 25, 26 England, see Great Britain Esquimalt, 175 Essington, Fort, 118 Etoline, Adolphus, Russian governor, 45,122 Expenditures, public, 216, 258, 295. See also Finance Factories Act, the B.C., 335 Fidalgo, 26 Financial condition of British Columbia, 216, 258, 262, 295. See also Revenue Finlayson, Roderick, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, 117; mmmmm mm INDEX with the force that took possession of Fort Stikien, 122; takes charge at Fort Camosun, 181-3; appointed head accountant of the Western Department, 188-9; included in Douglas's council of advisers, 207; member of the first British Columbia council, 217 Finlayson, Lake, 124 Fishing, in New Caledonia, 101,102; at Langley, 116, 129, 136, 330 Florida treaty, the, 153. 165 Fonte, Admiral de, 19, 22 Foreigners, status of, 219, 220, 231, 255, 258 Forts, plan of Hudson's Bay Company's, 82 Fox, Charles James, 32 Frances, Lake, discovered, 124 Franklin, Sir John, 103 Fraser, Simon, operations in New Caledonia, 59; descends the Tacouche Tesse, 60, 61; assumes command of the Red River Department, 98; his death, 98 Fraser, Fort, 98 Fraser route, the, 186 Free trade, on Vancouver Island, 293 French Revolution, the, 17, 31 Friendly Cove, Spanish settlement at, 26; visited by Meares, 26, 27 Fruit growing, 330 Fuca, Juan de, voyage of, 8, 9 Fur trade, in sea-otter, 22; status of, 161, characteristics of; 73-82. See also Hudson's Bay Company Galiano, Lieutenant, 35 Gallatin, representative of the United States in the Oregon boundary dispute, 151, 154, 158, 161, 170 Galvez, Spanish governor, 13, 15 George, Fort, 98 George, Fort (Astoria), 149 German Emperor, arbitrator in the San Juan affair, 283 Ghent, Treaty of, 149, 151, 165 Glenora, Fort, 121 Gold, discovery of, in California, 189; on the Fraser, 208, 221-8; in Queen Charlotte Islands, 219; yield of, 256. See also Cariboo Gold Harbour, 221 Gold Mines Act of 1859, 261 Gordon, Hon. John, 183 Goulburne, representative of Great Britain on the Oregon boundary dispute, 151 Grahame, James A., 265 Grant, President, 283 Grant, W. Colquhoun, 196 Gray, Captain, of Boston, 23; discovers the Columbia River, 24, 57, 148, 160, 161 Great Britain, in the Pacific, rights of, on north-west coast, 7,10,11, 16, 18, 29, 30, 61, 148. See also Chap. V, seriatim Great Northern Railway, 328 Greenhow, American historiographer, 155, 169 Grey, Earl, 220 Grouse Creek, 287 H Halkett, Fort, 123 Hanley, W. Wymond, collector of Customs, 239 361 igf" SIR JAMES DOUGLAS IP Hanna, James, first trader in sea- otter, 22 Harmon, 98 Harney, General, commander of the military department of Oregon, 281, 282 Haro archipelago, the, 275, 277, 280 Haro, Canal de, 276, 279 Harvey Creek, 287 Hearne, Samuel, 51, 53 Heceta, Spanish explorer, 14, 57, 148 Helmcken, J. S., speaker of the legislature and son-in-law of Douglas, arrives in Victoria, 189; member for Esquimalt, 210, 217; re-elected to the parliament of Vancouver Island, 274 Hill's Bar, Douglas at, 227; affair of, 247, 248 Hindu immigration, 337 Hope, voyage of the, 25 Hope, Fort, 186 Hope, miners at, 227 Horsefly Creek, 286 Hours of labour, in mines and smelters, 334 Howe's Pass, discovered by Thompson, 58 Hudson's Bay Company, traders and explorers of, 4; it rules the interior, 12; explorers on behalf of the company, 51; absorbs the North-West Company, 73, 162; leading characteristics, general system and policy, 73-83; some prominent members of, 83-6; extension of trade, 114 et seq.; trys to secure a foothold in California, 362 125-7; its relations with the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, 129-31; its policy with the United States settlers, 143-5; its acquisition of Vancouver Island, colonization and civil government, 191- 205; its officers elected to the first parliament of Vancouver Island, 217; its license in British Columbia revoked, 229, 233; a warning against favouritism, 240; its relation to the colony, 262; its internal history since 1859, 265,266; the San Juan affair, 275- 83; Douglas's forty years service in, 344, 346, 347, 349 Huskisson, representative of Great Britain in the Oregon boundary dispute, 154, 163 I Immigration, to Oregon, 138-43, 156, 192; to Vancouver Island, 195-206; Oriental, to British Columbia, 336-8 Indians, encounters with, by early traders, 37; relations with, 79, 80, 214, 220, 233, 243, 266-7, 296; Douglas's influence over, 350 Industrial developments, early, 78; later, in British Columbia, 329-35 Ingraham, American explorer, 25 Japanese immigration, 337 Jargon, the Chinook, 268 Jefferson, Thomas, character of, 64; policy of, 65, 66, 67, 169 Jesuits, the, 3, 12; in Oregon, 138; in British Columbia, 269 INDEX Jesup, General, report of, on Oregon, 163, 164 Juan de Fuca, Spanish explorer, 8, 9,22 Justice, administration of, in British Columbia, 215, 216, 217, 255 K Kamloops, 98, 222 Kamtchatka, fur trade in, 38 Keithley Creek, 287 Kelly, of Boston, his scheme of colonization, 135, 136 Kendrick, Captain, 23, 24 Kennedy, Arthur, appointed governor of Vancouver Island, 289 Kennedy, John E., member of Vancouver Island's first assembly, 210, 217 Kootenay district, first explored by Thompson, 58 Kootenay trail, the, 253, 298 Krusenstern, Russian navigator, his explorations, 46 Labouchere, British colonial secretary, 209, 210 Labour, condition of, in British Columbia, 316; in mines, 334, 335. See also Wages Langford, Captain, bailiff of the Puget Sound Company, 199; his grievances, 199, 200; elected a member of Vancouver Island's first assembly, but, lacking the necessary qualifications, is displaced, 210, 211 Langley, conditions at, 227 Langley, Fort, 116, 245 La Perouse, French naval officer, 25 Ledyard, John, 68 Lee, Jason, 137, 14C Legislature, opening of, in Vancouver Island, 212-6; in British Columbia, 315 Lemaire, Dutch navigator, 5 Lewis and Clark, their expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, 64, 160; in command of Jefferson's great expedition across the continent, 66-9, 148 Liard, River, ascent of the, 123 Liard, Fort, 123 Library, the first, in British Columbia, 117 Licenses, liquor, 244; mining, 261 Lighthouses, 258, 260 Lightning Creek, 287 Lillooet road, the, 252 Liquor, sale of, 243, 244 Lots, price of, 244, 246, 247 Louisiana, passes to Spain, 13; ceded to France, 63; boundaries of, 64; purchase of, 63,64, 66, 67, 150, 153, 167, 168 Lowhee Creek, 287 Lumbering, 128, 332 Lytton, Lord, 227, 231 M Macdonald, Sir John A., 321, 324 Mackay, J. W., 211, 217 Mackenzie, Alexander, prime minister of Canada, 321-3 Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 51, 52; traces the Mackenzie River, 53; crosses to the Pacific, 54, 148 863 SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Hi McGowan, ex-judge of California, a participant in the Hill's Bar affair, 248-9 McKay, 83, 95, 187 McLean, quoted, 106, 222 McLeod, Fort, 97 McLeod, John, ascends the Liard, 123 McLoughlin, Dr. John, 84, 94, 96, 111, 114, 139-42, 144, 187, 351, 352 McLoughlin, Jr., John, 122 McLoughlin, Fort, 117, 178 McNeill, Captain, 117, 176 McTavish, Dugald, 265 Magellan, Fernando, Portuguese navigator, 5 Mails, transport of, 233. See also Maldonado, Pedro Nunez, 6 Manson, Donald, in command of Fort McLoughlin, 117; with Tol- mie founds the first circulating library on the Pacific coast, 117, 118; rules in New Caledonia for twelve years, 285, 286 Manufacturing, in British Columbia, 335 Maquinna, native chief, 27 Marchand, Etienne, explores the north-west coast, 25 Marco Polo, Venetian traveller, 2 Martinez, Estevan Jose, 13, 28 Meares, Captain, 22, 26, 27, 2% Melaspina, Spanish explorer, 25 Mendoza, Spanish explorer, 6 Metlakahtla, 270 Mexico, conquest of, 3, 5, 6; agreement of Hudson's Bay Company with, 126, 127 364 Michaux, Andre, 68 Milton, Viscount, 317 Mines, gold, see Gold Mining, regulation of, 261; progress of, 333 Missionaries, 2, 114; in Oregon, 136-42; in British Columbia, 269 Mitchell Harbour, 221 Moody, Colonel, 236, 238, 247, 248, 252, 254 Monroe, Alexander, 265 Monroe, doctrine, the, 154, 167 Moresby Island, gold on, 221 Morice, Father, quoted, 107 Muir, John, 190, 210, 217 Mumford, Fort, 121 Musgrave, Anthony, appointed governor, 314 N Nahanais, Indian tribe, 97 Nanaimo, 190, 191 Napoleon, mentioned, 17, 18 Needham, Chief-Justice, 239 Nelson, Fort, 123 New Albion, 8 New Caledonia, 56, 97-9, 160. See aIso Cariboo Newcastle, Duke of, 271 New Langley, 246 New Westminster, 247, 292, 298 Nez Perces, Indian tribe, 136, 137, 139 Nicommen, gold at, 222 Nisqually, agriculture at, 131 Nootka, discovered by Cook, 20; trade at, 268 Nootka affair, the, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 160, 166 North American Fur Company, 134 INDEX North-West America,, launching of the, 28 North-West Company, the, traders and explorers of, 4; its organization, object and success, 51, 52; three noted employees of, 57 et seq.; its connection with the Pacific Fur Company, 70, 71; absorbed by the Hudson's Bay Company, 73 North-West passage, search for the, 13, 17, 19, 50, 51. See also Anian, Strait of, and Chapter I, seriatim O Ogden, P. S., 120, 126, 187, 265, 285 Qkanagan, 186 Omineca, gold in, 286, 287 Oregon, origin of the name, 56; possession of, 62; settlement of, 138-43 Oregon boundary, 143, 145, 147- 74, 275. See also San Juan affair Oregon City, 187 Oregon River, reported by Carver, 19,57 Orient, short route to the, 2, 5, 17 Oriental immigration, 336-8 Overland discovery, 49 et seq. Owybee, the, 136 Pacific Ocean, early voyages in, 3, 4, 12, 18 et seq. Pacific Fur Company, 68, 69, 70, 71, 134, 152 Pacific Mail Company, 226 Pakenham, British Ambassador to the United States, 156 Pambrun, 99 Parker, Presbyterian missionary, 137 Parliament buildings, at Victoria, 272 Peace River, ascended by Mackenzie, 54; by Fraser, 59 Pearkes, George, 244 Pelly River, discovered by Campbell, 124 Pemberton, J. D., 210, 240 Perez, Juan, 13, 14, 148 Peru, conquest of, 3, 5 Pilcher, 135 Pitt, William, 31 Pizarro, Francisco, Spanish adventurer, 5 Political conditions, in British Columbia, 337, 338 Polk, James K., 157 Population of British Columbia, 291, 294, 328, 329 Porcupine River, 125 Portlock and Dixon, fur traders, discover the separation of the Queen Charlotte group from the mainland, 22 Portugal, rights of, in America, 10, 27 Postage, 233, 313, 314 Prescription, right of, 167 Prevost, Captain, 278, 283 Prices at Victoria, 225; at the Fraser diggings, 242, 243; of lots, 244, 246, 247; in Cariboo, 288 Prince of Wales Island, 118 Prince William's Sound, visited by 365 ufff" SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Quadra, 15; discovered by Cook, 21 Printing, first on Pacific coast, 138 Promishleniks, the, 41 Public lands, administration of, 291. See also Crown lands Puget Sound Agricultural Company, 129-31 Puritans, the, 3 Quadra, Bodega y, voyage of, in the Sonora, 14; represents Spain in the Nootka affair, 32, 33; death of, 34 Qualifications of electors, 209, 210 Queen Charlotte Islands, visited by Perez, 14; by Portlock and Dixon, 22; by William Douglas,. 28; gold discovered on, 219, 220 Queensborough, 247 Quesnel, Morris, 60 Quesnel, River, gold discovered on the, 284, 285, 286 Quimper, Lieutenant, 25, 148 R Raccoon, the, 149 Rae, W. G., 122, 127 Railways in British Columbia, 327. See also Canadian Pacific Railway Reciprocity Treaty, 213 Reformation, the, influence of, on colonization, 2 Renaissance, the, influence of, 2 Representative government, on Vancouver Island, 208; in British Columbia, 292-4. See also Legislature 366 Revenue, 297 Revillagigedo Islands, discovered, 6 Richards, Captain, 278 Roads, building of, 238, 243, 249, 257, 305, 328 Robinson, representative of Great Britain in the Oregon boundary dispute, 151 Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 134 Rocky Mountain Portage, 97 Rosario Strait, 276, 279 Ross, Charles, in command at Fort McLoughlin, 117; dies in command at Fort Camosun, 181 Ross Settlement, the, 44 Royal Engineers, the, their duties, 232; commanded by Colonel Moody, 236; arrive at Victoria, 238; take part in the Hill's Bar affair, 247-9; they build a wagon road from Harrison to the Upper Fraser, 252; and the Cariboo road, 253, 254; their work completed, they disband, 254 Royalty on gold proposed, 261 Rupert, Fort, 190 Rupert, Prince, of England and Bohemia, 73 Rush, representative of the United States in the Oregon boundary dispute, 151, 154 Russia, occupies Alaska, 4, 12, 17, 32, 37-46; trade rivalry with, 114-19; treaties with, 128, 153 Russian American Company, organized, 43, 45 St. Elias, Mount, Quadra, 15 sighted by 1 -i-Vi JJUtflSEgSHf^i ——BM^BI^HIBiMI ■ INDEX St. James, Fort, 98 Salmon, see Fishing Sandwich Islands, visited by Cook, 21; by Vancouver, 34; trade with, 78, 184 San Francisco, Hudson's Bay Company at, 127 San Juan affair, the, 275-83 Santiago, voyages of the, 13, 14, 15 "Sapperton," 247 Sealing, 331 Sea-otter, 21, 22, 40, 148 Seaport, to be established, 232, 258 Sekanais, the, Indian tribe, 97, 104 Selkirk, Fort, 124 Settlement Act of 1884, 324 Settlement of new territory, 159; of Vancouver Island, 195-205 Seymour, Frederick, appointed governor of British Columbia, 295, 311, 312 Siberia, conquest of, 17, 38; fur trade in, 38 Simpson, Fort, 116, 120 Simpson, Fort, on the Liard, 125 Simpson, Sir George, 109, 127 Skagits, Indian tribe, 182 Skeena River, gold on the, 221 Smith, Donald A., (Lord Strath- cona), in the Hudson's Bay Company, 265; drives the last spike oftheC.P.R., 326 Smith, Jedidiah, American fur trader, 126, 133, 134 ■ Songhies, the, Indian tribe, 177 Sonora, voyage of the, 14, 15 Sovereignty of new territory, how acquired, 159 Spain, conquers Mexico and Peru, 3, 5; national character of, 4, 11; early voyages of, 5, 6; claims of, in the New World, 10; colonial policy of, 11; activity of, 13, 14, 15, 25, 26, 29, 35, 147, 148, 153, 165. See also Florida Treaty, Oregon boundary, Louisiana Spaulding, American missionary to Oregon, 137, 140 Staines, Rev. R. J., chaplain to the Hudson's Bay Company, 188,189 Stikien, occupation of the, 119,120, 121 Stikien, Fort, 122 Strathcona, Lord, see Smith, Donald A. Stuart, John, 60, 98 Stuart Lake, discovered, 98 Tacouche Tesse, discovered by Mackenzie, 54; descended by Fraser, 59 Taku, Fort, 121, 122, 178 Tariffs, 232. See also Revenue Taxation, 290, 291. See also Revenue Telegraphs completed, 298 Texas, 164 Thompson, David, 57; his discoveries, 58 Tipping, Captain, 22 Tod, John, of Fort McLeod, 99, 100, 105, 204 Tolmie, W. F., in charge of Fort McLoughlin, 117; with Manson founds the first circulating library on the Pacific coast, 117, 118 Tonquin, the, voyage and destruction of, 37, 71 367 iff SIR JAMES DOUGLAS Town sites, 240, 244, 246 Trade, early expansion of, 114; growth of, 184, 316 Transportation, see Roads, Railways, Canadian Pacific Railway, etc. Treaties, between England and Russia, 118, 120, 121 ; with Mexico, 127. See also Florida, Ghent, Utrecht Treaty rights in Oregon, 165, 166 Trutch, Hon. J. W., first lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, 3i6 Tsilalthach, Indian chief, 182 Tsoughilam, Indian chief, 182 Tyler, President, 156 Tzoelhnolle, a Fraser Lake Indian, 105-7 U Ulloa, Antonio de, 6 Umpqua, Fort, 132 Union of the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, 295, 297-300 United States, explores the northwest coast, 18, 23, 61. See also Oregon boundary, San Juan affair, California University of British Columbia, 340 Utrecht, Treaty of, 10 V Valdez, Lieutenant, 35 Vancouver, city of, 326, 327 Vancouver, Fort, 110,113,132,187 Vancouver, George, English navigator, 17, 19; appointed British commissioner in the Nootka affair, 32, 33; explores the whole 368 north-west shore line, 34; his friendship with Quadra cemented in the naming of " Quadra and Vancouver Island," 35 Vancouver Island, naming of, 35; acquired by Hudson's Bay Company, 191-206; conditions in, 271- 3, 293. See also Chap. VII, seriatim Vanschouten, Dutch navigator, 5 Victoria, founding of, 146, 175-8; growth of, 198, 224, 271, 290, 298; selected as capital, 311 Vizcaino, Sebastian, Spanish navigator, 12, 13, 35, 148 W Wadddington, Alfred, 317 Wages, 244, 267, 316 War of 1812, mentioned, 71, 149 Webster, Daniel, 170 West, settlement of the, 65 Western Department of the Hudson's Bay Company, defined,'76- 8, 265 Western history, beginning of, 1 Whaling, 184, 331 Whitman, Presbyterian missionary, 137, 138, 187 Willamette, agriculture on the, 130; Lee on the, 137; government erected on the, 143 Willow River, gold on the, 287 Winnipeg, becomes centre of West- tern Department, 265 Work, John, his expedition into the wilds of Oregon, 132; member of the Victoria board of management, 265 Wrangell, Baron, 45, 120 i^BHHBHSffinHHBH^HSHBS^ii^SlPSKR! alHJJf!K!i4!U»i<l**A* INDEX Wyeth, American trader, 135 Yates, Joseph, 210 Yerba Buena Cove, 127 Y York boats, 82 Yale, J. M., 99; in command at Fort Yukon, Fort, 125 George, 105 Yukon, River, descended by Camp- Yale, Fort, 186 bell, 124, 125 369 w I^HH > CO ?+ ps f8. O ^ s o a ^^H !& o P O ;> H 63 £s at c-1 . i g SIS!?
Includes index. Other copies: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/936836945
Books
English
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Toronto : Morang & Co., Limited
Images provided for research and reference use only. For permission to publish, copy, or otherwise distribute these images please contact digital.initiatives@ubc.ca.
Original Format: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. FC3822.1.D692 C62 1908a
Douglas, James, 1803-1877
British Columbia--History
Sir James Douglas
Text