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Upon returning from exile Burr tried to break his lease to Astor, but the lease was so astutely drawn that the courts decided in Astor's favor. Smith's account is faulty. Most of the leases expired in 1866. The value of the reversions was very large. Docs. Doc.
Then a month more was spent hunting for the Chesapeake. There was plenty of time for flute-playing and making of plans. On board ship he met a German, twenty years older than himself, who was a fur-trader and had been home on a visit. John Jacob played the flute, and the German friend told stories of fur-trading among the Indians. Young Astor's curiosity was excited.
He went straight to the humble abode of his brother Henry, a kindly, generous, jovial soul, who gave him a truly fraternal welcome, and received with hospitable warmth the companion of his voyage. Henry Astor's prosperity had been temporarily checked by the evacuation of New York, which had occurred five months before, and which had deprived the tradesmen of the city of their best customers.
The Government, and especially the courts, were quick and generous in affording the greatest protection and the widest latitude to Astor's company. But when the Indians resented the robberies and injustices to which they were subjected beyond bearing, they were murdered.
"Gosh!" said the boy, as he got up out of Uncle Ike's lap, "if you are not a comfort! Between that porous plaster, and Astor's going to England, and my girl at the seashore, I was about down with nervous prostration, but I am all right now," and the redheaded boy went out to round up the gang and tell them the country was all safe enough, as long as they had Uncle Ike to run it.
Paul, has been built up by the enterprise of the trapper. Mackinaw and Montreal owe much of their growth to the traffic of the fur trade; and many a kingly fortune John Jacob Astor's, for instance has been founded on peltry.
A Russian peasant smells like the Chicago river on a summer's day, or Tolstoi's "Kreutzer Sonata." He's more disagreeable to the olfactories than old John Jacob Astor's hide house, from whose effluvia sprung the master spirits of Gotham's Four Hundred. He will eat what would send a coyote howling out of the country.
Washington Irving was a close friend, too, and first crossed the Atlantic on an Astor pass. He banked on Washington Irving's genius, and loaned him money to come and go, and buy a house. Irving was named in Astor's will as one of the trustees of the Astor Library Fund, and repaid all favors by writing "Astoria." Astor died, aged eighty-six. It was a natural death, a thing that very seldom occurs.
Forsyth relates that for every dollar in merchandise that the Astor company exchanged for furs, the company received $1.25 or $1.50 in fur values, undoubtedly by the trader's low trick of short weighing. In law the Indian was supposed to have certain rights, but Astor's company not only ignored but flouted them. Now when the Indians complained, what happened? Did the Government protect them?
Nominally, the United States Government ruled this great sweep of territory and made the laws and professed to execute them. In reality, Astor's company was a law unto itself. That it employed both force and fraud and entirely ignored all laws enacted by Congress, is as clear as daylight from the Government reports of that period.
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