Americans in Oregon may have regarded the advent of this British man-of-war with suspicion, but the English company at Fort Vancouver showed no elation, nor made the British captain more welcome than the American missionary or traveller.[1]
There was as yet no reason to desire governmental interference. The Americans were not yet overstepping the boundary fixed in the British imagination as their rightful limits; and perhaps Douglas foresaw that the presence of a war-vessel would alarm them, and lead them to call upon their government.
Captain Belcher, on his side, was outspoken in his contempt for the unmilitary appearance of forts George and Vancouver. "No Fort Vancouver exists," he says; "it is merely the mercantile post of the Hudson's Bay Company."[2] And the captain's sneer was just, inasmuch as the total armament of Fort Vancouver at this time consisted of a little three-pounder.[3]
Belcher, like Simpson, Dunn, and Beaver, blamed McLoughlin for encouraging so many missionary settlers.[4] Indeed, it is evident that while the Americans feared British influence, the English were no less alarmed about American predominance.
In their petition to congress the American settlers also alleged that the British government had recently made a grant to the fur company of all the lands lying between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, and that the company were actually exercising acts of ownership, opening extensive farms,[5] and shipping to
- ↑ 'Belcher,' says Roberts, 'thought himself slighted, but I think Douglas was only carrying out his orders.' Recollections, MS., 8.
- ↑ Belcher's Voyage, i. 295, 298.
- ↑ Matthieu's Refugee, MS., 18.
- ↑ Belcher's Voyage, i. 297. 'By a strange and unpardonable oversight of the local officers, missionaries from the United States were allowed to take religious charge of the population; and these artful men lost no time in introducing such a number of their countrymen as reduced the influence of the British settlers to complete insignificance.' Boston Miss. Herald, Dec. 1866.
- ↑ As if that were not what the Americans were doing on the south side of the Columbia. But as to the government making grants, it could no more do so than the American government, before the boundary should be defined. The Agricultural Association could not even incorporate before the crown of
