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Europa, Captain Allen, of Boston, was on that coast. The Hudson's Bay Company, in pursuance of their regular policy, immediately fitted out the brig Llama, and instructed her cap- tain, McNeil (as he himself informed me), to follow the Europa from port to port, and harbor to harbor, and drive her off the coast at any sacrifice, by underselling her, no matter what her prices, whenever she should open a trade. It has been declared by Mr. Simpson, who was at the head of the company's marine, that they were resolved, even at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds, to expel the Americans from traffic on that coast.
I am informed that in November last (1838) the brig Joseph Peabody, of New York, was fitted and sent out to attempt once more the northwest fur trade. The voyage is regarded as an experiment, and her chance of success depends on her finding the company unprepared for her arrival. So Icwig as our Government slumbers on her rights, so long must the enterprise of our citizens, even within our own territorial limits, even within American sovereignty, be rendered abortive by the force or fraud of foreign monopolists.
In their intercourse with the Indians, the company are gov- erned by no higher principle than self-interest, and are fre- quently guilty of the most arbitrary acts. While I was there, the company surgeon at Vancouver deliberately seized an Indian who had been guilty of some indecency, and proceeded to mutilate his person, and for this wrong, neither the victim nor his friends dared to ask for redress, or even to make any complaint.
The number of trading posts in Oregon, belonging to this company, in 1834, exceeded twenty. They are called "forts," but they are mostly regular villages, such as Vancouver, Wallawallah, Oakenagen, Colville, Neperces, &c. At these places are seen houses, stores, workshops, traders, farmers, artisans, herds of cattle, and cultivated farms, waving with abundant harvests; in short, every appearance of permanent and flourishing settlements. Of these farming establishments,
