foreign ports vast quantities of the finest pine lumber.[1]
Such was the memorial for which Leslie, superintendent of the Mission pro tem., and Bailey, an attaché of the same institution, were responsible, whatever Farnham had to do with drawing it up. Farnham remained among the hospitable missionary families until the middle of November, when he repaired to Fort Vancouver to wait for the departure of the company's vessel, the Nereid, in which he embarked for the Sandwich Islands early in December. When he reached Oahu he addressed a letter to the United States secretary of war, in which he informed the government that the Hudson's Bay Company had taken upon lease, for a term of twenty years, the exclusive right to hunt, trap, and control by law the Russian possessions in America, Sitka only excepted, possession to be given in March 1840; that the British government had granted a large tract of land to the English fur company, which was making grants and sales to individuals; that the company was making large quantities of flour to supply the Russians, with whom it had a contract for a term of years; was getting out lumber for California and the Hawaiian Islands,[2] and opening extensive farms in the Cowlitz Valley. He mentioned the arrival of the English emigrants, and stated as a significant fact that among them was a gunner, for whom he could see no use, as the company confessed there was no danger from the Indians in the vicinity of their forts; he also alluded to a rumor that the fur company had cannon buried on
- ↑ 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 514; Gray's Hist. Or., 194–6. The only saw-mill of the company at this period was that above Vancouver, which turned out about 3,000 feet daily.
- ↑ In his letter Farnham says the company's mill turned out 3,000 feet of lumber every 48 hours instead of every 24.
Great Britain became possessed of the territory; so that actually the Puget Sound Company was on about the same basis as the Methodist Mission; one was under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the other of the Methodist Missionary Society, and neither had nor could have any real title to the lands they held.
