establish a new France in America, extending from the St Lawrence to the Pacific, or at least a sovereign state in the federal union.[1]
Simpson also speculated upon the future of the Canadian colony, of whose trade the Hudson's Bay Company was assured, and remarked that the American colony also was in a great measure dependent upon the company. But the representatives of two governments, and one corporation almost equal to a sovereignty, who visited Oregon this year, all reported favorably upon the moral, social, and material condition of the colonists.[2] About the end of November Simpson and Mofras both sailed from Oregon for San Francisco Bay, in the bark Cowlitz, accompanied by McLoughlin and his daughter, Mrs Rae, who was going to join her husband, William Glen Rae, in charge of the new post of the company at Yerba Buena.
Just before Simpson's departure there arrived in
- ↑ Mofras, Explor., i. 294; Greenhow to Falconer, 6; South. Quart. Review, xv. 218; Dwinelle's Speech, 5, in Pioneer Sketches.
- ↑ Simpson estimated the whole population of the Willamette Valley in 1841, American and French, at 500 souls, 60 Canadians and others with Indian wives and half-breed families, and 65 American families. Nar., i. 249. Spaulding gave the number of American colonists at 70 families. 27th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Rept. 830. Wilkes gave the numbers of white families at about 60. He also has the number of cattle in the Willamette Valley at 10,000, worth $10 a head wild, and much more for milch cows or work oxen. This estimate of the riches of the colonists in cattle is probably too high, though some herds had been driven from California since 1837. Simpson placed the number of cattle at 3,000, horses at 500, besides an uncounted multitude of hogs. Even the lower estimate would give an average of 24 cattle, 4 horses, and plenty of pork to each family. Simpson also stated the wheat raised in 1841 to be 35,000 bushels from 120 farms, or about 300 bushels to each farm, with a due proportion of oats, barley, pease, and potatoes. The price of wheat in 1841, after the Puget Sound Company had opened its farm on the Cowlitz, was 62½ cents per bushel, for which anything except spirits could be drawn from the company's stores, at 50 per cent advance on London cost. 'This is supposed,' says Wilkes, 'all things taken into consideration, to be equal to $1.12 per bushel; but it is difficult for the settlers so to understand it, and they are by no means satisfied with the rate. Nar. U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 390; Simpsons Nar., i. 250. The wages of mechanics in the Willamette Valley were $2.50 to $3 a day, common laborers $1, and both difficult to procure at these prices. It could not reasonably be said that under these conditions the colonists were suffering any severe hardships. For other accounts of the colony at this time, see Nicolay's Or. Ter.; Blanchet's Hist. Cath. Ch. in Or.; Evans, in Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1877; Bond, in 27th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Rept. 830.
