The fop of the Columbia district was John Lee Lewes, an old Northwester, who, after having been many years at the several northern posts, was placed in charge of the district of McKenzie River, and afterward at Fort Colville. He was a man of fine personal appearance, and possessed many good qualities. He had the misfortune to lose his right hand by the accidental discharge of a gun. When he retired from the service in 1846 he proceeded to Australia with the intention of remaining there; but habit was too strong upon him, and he returned and took up his abode at Red River.[1] A son of Mr Lewes was the first representative from Vancouver county when Oregon territory was organized.
John Dunn, who wrote a book on Oregon made up partly from his own observations but more largely from those of others, was in charge of Fort McLoughlin, on Milbank Sound, in 1830; but later he was at Fort George on the Columbia, where he remained till about 1840. Dunn was one of two young naval apprentices sent out in the ship Ganymede in 1830. George B. Roberts of Cathlamet was the other. This latter gentleman was for many years clerk at Fort Vancouver, being cognizant of a long series of interesting events. His Recollections in manuscript, from which I have made so many extracts, has proved very valuable to me.[2]
- ↑ Anderson's Hist. Northwest Coast, MS., 85–6.
- ↑ Roberts has, by request, furnished his own biographical sketch. It is, like all his writings, rich in incident and allusion, and though not written with the expectation that it would be inserted verbatim in this history, there can be no objection to the following quotation: 'I was born at Aldborough in Suffolk, east coast of England, fifty miles or so north of the Thames, 16th of December 1815, the birthplace of the poet Crabbe. Through the kind interest of Sir Edward Berry, Nelson's flag-captain at the Nile, to whom Nelson said of the French as the fleet entered Aboukir Bay, "Count 'em, Sir Ed'ard", Southey's Life of Nelson, I was admitted to the Greenwich Royal Naval School at the age of between eleven and twelve, on the 30th of August '27, where I remained till 3d of November 1830, and was then with several others bound apprentices for seven years to the Hudson's Bay Company's naval service, and sailed from London on the 11th of November 1830 in the bark Ganymede, Captain Charles Kissling. She was only 213 tons, had a crew of 30, carried 6 carronades in the waist, and was for all Indian purposes a safe ship. The small size was owing to the difficulties and dangers of the Columbia there being no charts, buoys, or pilots in those days. We arrived at the Columbia
