United States or Germany ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Henry of the Missouri Company, the first American who trapped upon the head-waters of the Columbia; and the frightful hardships sustained by Wilson P. Hunt, Ramsay Crooks, Robert Stuart, and other intrepid Astorians, in their ill-fated expeditions across the mountains, appeared for a time to check all further enterprise in that direction.
M'Dougal went on board, and was seen returning late in the afternoon. The Astorians watched her with straining eyes, to discover who were on board, but the sun went down, and the evening closed in, before she was sufficiently near. At length she reached the land, and Mr. Hunt stepped on shore.
A Canadian Trapper.-A Freeman of the Forest An Iroquois Hunter. Winter on the Columbia.-Festivities of New Year. THE tidings of the loss of the Tonquin, and the massacre of her crew, struck dismay into the hearts of the Astorians.
M'Dougal, was strongly suspected of being concerned in this general combination. Alarmed at rumors of this impending danger, the Astorians suspended their regular labor, and set to work, with all haste, to throw up temporary works for refuge and defense.
He had, therefore, by this time, become a firm friend of the Astorians, and formed a kind of barrier between them and the hostile intruders from the north.
They were astonished at such a prohibition, and were exceedingly galled by the tone and manner assumed by the clerks and retainers of the Northwest Company, who ruffled about in that swelling and braggart style which grows up among these heroes of the wilderness; they, in fact, considered themselves lords of the ascendant and regarded the hampered and harassed Astorians as a conquered people.
Then for Great Britain came Vancouver and Broughton; then the Americans, Lewis and Clark and the Astorians; and finally Thompson, the British Nor'wester and the first man to explore the great river from its source to the sea.
Even the old Astorians, used to this sort of weather and not disliking it, having little to do in the winter time, and being always braced up by sea-airs that even this fresh-water flood could not divest of their tonic flavor these old sea-dogs, pilots, fishermen, and other amphibia, were constrained at last to give utterance to mild growls at the persistent character of the storm.
WHILE the Astorians were busily occupied in completing their factory and fort, a report was brought to them by an Indian from the upper part of the river, that a party of thirty white men had appeared on the banks of the Columbia, and were actually building houses at the second rapids. This information caused much disquiet.
The only remaining white man, the wounded Lewis, had blown up the powder magazine. He perished himself in order to punish the marauders. Had this story been known at Astoria when Thompson arrived, he would have found the Astorians in a thoroughly dejected condition. As it was, murmurs of discontent were heard.
Word Of The Day