for the interior; here was the great fur house, where the peltries were brought together from scores of smaller forts and trading camps, scattered through a wilderness empire of half a million square miles. They came from St. James, Langley, and Kamloops in the far northwest; from Umpqua in the south; from Walla Walla, Colville, Spokane, Okanogan, and many other places in the upper portions of the great valley. Hundreds of trappers followed the water courses through the gloomy forests and into the most dangerous fastnesses of the mountains, in order to glean the annual beaver crop for delivery to these substations.
Profits of the western trade. The Hudson Bay Company is still engaged in business and the books of these early years are a part of its business files. They are not, and have never been, opened freely to the researches of scholars. Such information as we have respecting the profits of the Company's western fur trade has leaked out almost accidentally and we are still waiting for facts which the Company's records alone can fully reveal. In a letter written by McLoughlin to the Company in 1845—^^^s "Last Letter"^ — Simpson is cjuoted as saying that the accounts from that field, which show the profits of the three years, 1841, 1842, and 1843 to be £22,974, £16,982, and £21,726 respectively are not accurate. He, in fact, figures for those years a net loss of over £5000, which looks on its face unreasonable. Wt have no means of
1 Edited by Katherine B. Judson. See Am. Historical Review, XXI, pp. 127.
