Part 35 (1/2)

After Thompson came Simon Fraser and John Stuart, the names of both of whom are perpetuated in the rivers bearing their names to-day. Fraser is described by one of his a.s.sociates as ”an illiterate, ill-bred, fault-finding man, of jealous disposition, but ambitious and energetic, with considerable conscience, and in the main holding to honest convictions.”

Both these men bore a chief share in establis.h.i.+ng trading posts on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, which are now a.s.sociated with the Hudson's Bay Company.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] White Man's Lake.

[83] Of David Thompson we get a portrait from Mr. H. H. Bancroft. He was, he says, ”of an entirely different order of man from the orthodox fur-trader. Tall and fine looking, with sandy complexion, with large features, deep-set studious eyes, high forehead and broad shoulders, the intellectual was set upon the physical. His deeds have never been trumpeted as have those of some of the others; but in the westward explorations of the North-West Company, no man performed more valuable service or estimated his achievements more modestly. Unhappily his last days were not as pleasant as fell to the lot of some of the worn out members of the Company. He retired, almost blind, to Lachine House, once the headquarters of the Company, where he was met with in 1831 in a very decrepit condition.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

1787-1808.

Captain Vancouver -- La Perouse in the Pacific -- The Straits of Anian -- A Fantastic Episode -- Russian Hunters and Traders -- The Russian Company -- Dissensions amongst the Northmen -- They send the _Beaver_ to Hudson's Bay -- The Scheme of Mackenzie a Failure -- A Ferocious Spirit Fostered -- Abandoned Characters -- A series of Outrages -- The affair at Bad Lake.

When Mackenzie, in July, 1793, reached the Pacific by land from the east, he had been preceded by sea only three years by Captain George Vancouver, the discoverer of the British Columbian coast. The same year Gray, sailing from Boston in 1790, entered the Columbia River farther south. But the t.i.tle of Muscovy to the northern coasts had already been made good by several Russians since Bering's time, and the Company's charter secured to them the lands drained by the Fraser, Mackenzie, and Peace rivers, to the west.

[Sidenote: La Perouse in the Pacific.]

So little, however, was the Russian t.i.tle recognized for some time, that when this unfortunate expedition of La Perouse, with the frigates _Boussole_ and _Astralabe_, stopped on this coast in 1787, that doughty destroyer of York and Prince of Wales' Forts did not hesitate to consider the friendly harbour in lat.i.tude 58 36' as open to permanent occupation. Describing this harbour, which he named Port des Francois, he says that nature seemed to have created at this extremity of the world a port like that of Toulon, but vaster in plan and accommodation; and then, considering that it had never been discovered before, that it was situated thirty-three leagues north-west of Remedios, the limit of Spanish navigation, about two hundred and eighty-four leagues from Nootka, and one hundred leagues from Prince William Sound. The mariner records his judgment that ”if the French Government had any project of a factory on this coast no nation could have the slightest right to oppose it.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: DE L'ISLE'S MAP, 1752.]

Thus was Russia to be coolly dislodged by the French! There is little doubt but that the Company, judging by its declarations in committee some years afterwards, would have had something to say in the matter.

But La Perouse and his frigates sailed farther on in their voyage and never returned to France. Their fate for a generation remained unknown, until their s.h.i.+pwrecked hulls were accidentally found on a desert island in the South Pacific. The unfinished journal of this zealous admiral had, however, in the meantime been sent by him overland by way of Kamschatka and Siberia to France, where it was published by decree of the National a.s.sembly, thus making known his supposed discovery and his aspirations.

[Sidenote: Spanish claims.]

Spain also had been a claimant. In 1775 Bodega, a Spanish navigator, seeking new opportunities to plant the Spanish flag, reached a parallel of 58 on this coast, not far from Sitka; but this supposed discovery was not followed by any immediate a.s.sertion of dominion. The universal aspiration of Spain had embraced this whole region at a much earlier day, and shortly after the return of Bodega another enterprise was equipped to verify the larger claim, being nothing less than the original t.i.tle as discoverer of the straits between America and Asia, and of the conterminous continent under the name of Anian. Indeed, a Spanish doc.u.ment appeared, which caused a considerable fluttering of hearts amongst the Adventurers, ent.i.tled ”Relation of the Discovery of the Strait of Anian made by me, Captain Lorenzo Ferren Maldonado,”

purporting to be written at the time, although it did not see the light until 1781, when it immediately became the subject of a memoir before the French Academy. This narrative of Maldonado has long since taken its place with that of the celebrated Munchausen.

The whole fantastic episode of Anian's Straits is worthy of mention in a history of the Company and its lands. There is no doubt of the existence of early maps bearing straits of that name to the north. On an interesting map by Zoltieri, bearing the date of 1566, without lat.i.tude or longitude, the western coast of the continent is here delineated with straits separating it from Asia, not unlike Bering's Straits in outline and with the name in Italian, Stretto di Anian; and towards the south the coast possesses a certain conformity to that which we now know. Below the straits is an indentation corresponding to Bristol Bay; then a peninsula somewhat broader than Alaska, which is continued in an elbow of the coast; lower down appear three islands, not unlike Sitka, Queen Charlotte and Vancouver; and lastly, to the south appears the peninsula of Lower California. After a time maps began to record the Straits of Anian; but the substantial conformity of the early delineation with the reality has always been somewhat of a mystery.[84]

The foundation of the story of Anian is said to lie in the voyage of the Portuguese navigator, Caspar de Cortereal, in 1500-1505, who, on reaching Hudson's Bay in quest of a pa.s.sage to India, imagined he had found it, naming his discovery ”in honour of two brothers who accompanied him.”

[Sidenote: Russians on the west coast.]

Meanwhile Russian hunters and traders from Okhotsk were extending their expedition from the north-east coast of Siberia to the north-west coast of North America. A Russian Government expedition started from Okhotsk in 1790, under the command of Captain Billings, an Englishman in the Russian service, and to Captain Taryteheff, one of the members, are due important researches on the hydrography and ethnology of these countries. The first attempt at permanent settlement was due to three Russian traders, Shelekoff and the two Golikoffs, who fitted out two or three vessels to be sent to ”the land of Alaska, also called America; to islands known or unknown, for the purpose of trading in furs; of exploring the country and entering into relations with the inhabitants.” Their first expedition started in 1781, and the first settlement was founded on the Island of Kodiak.

The authority of the Russian Government was thus established on this and the adjacent islands. In 1790, Shelekoff, then residing in Irkoutsk, sent out a merchant named Baranoff to govern the new colony.[85]

Thus the knowledge that they were being pressed in on opposite sides by the Canadian traders on the south and east, and by Russians on the north and west, reached the Company at the same time. As a matter of fact, the knowledge of Baranoff's enterprise and the energy with which it was being prosecuted did not come before the committee until October, 1794; and it was in that very month that the report of Mackenzie's journey reached them.

The next few years were devoted to devising and considering schemes to counteract these two growing compet.i.tors--to oppose the further progress of the Russians on the one hand, and to combat the North-Westers on the other.

For twenty-seven years Baranoff continued to be the controlling mind of the new Russian trading enterprise. Shelekoff died in 1795; and his widow continued the business, and upon combining with the Milnikoff Company it increased gradually in wealth. The charter of these joint enterprises, to which the name of the Russian-American Fur Company was given, was signed in August, 1798, and confirmed at St. Petersburg in 1799. That year witnessed the settlement of New Archangel, on the island of Sitka.

The consequences of this increased output were not, however, felt in the fur-markets at Leipsic. Europe was convulsed by war, and Napoleon had laid an embargo on British goods. The furs, therefore, acc.u.mulated for several years in the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company without finding a mart.

From 1787 to 1817, for only a portion of which time the Russian Company existed, the Unalaska district yielded upwards of 2,500,000 seal skins alone. The number of other skins reported at times was prodigious.