Vancouver to be paid in monthly sums to the crew of the Modeste.[1] The subsequent overland arrivals brought some coin, though not enough ta remedy the evil.
One effect of the condition of trade in the colony was to check credit, which in itself would not have been injurious, perhaps,[2] had it not also tended to discourage labor. A mechanic who worked for a stated price was not willing to take whatever might be given him in return for his labor.[3]
Another effect of such a method was to prevent vessels coming to Oregon to trade.[4] The number of
- ↑ Roberts' Recollections, MS., 21; Ebbert's Trapper's Life, MS., 40.
- ↑ Howison relates that he found many families who, rather than incur debt, had lived during their first year in the country entirely on boiled wheat and salt salmon, the men going without hat or shoes while putting in and harvesting their first crop. Coast and Country, 16.
- ↑ Moss gives an illustration of this check to industry. A man named Anderson was employed by Abernethy in his saw-mill, and labored night and day. Abernethy's stock of goods was not large or well graded, and he would sell certain articles only for cash, even when his own notes were presented. Anderson had purchased part of a beef, which he wished to salt for family use, but salt being one of the articles for which cash was the equivalent at Abernethy's store, he was refused it, though Abernethy was owing him, and he was obliged to go to the fur company's store for it. Pioneer Times, MS., 40–3.
- ↑ Herewith I summarize the Oregon ocean traffic for the 14 years since the first American settlement, most of which occurrences are mentioned elsewhere. The Hudson's Bay Company employed in that period the barks Ganymede, Forager, Nereid, Columbia, Cowlitz, Diamond, Vancouver, Wave, Brothers, Janet, Admiral Moorsom, the brig Mary Dare, the schooner Cadboro, and the steamer Beaver, several of them owned by the company. The Beaver, after her first appearance in the river in 1836, was used in the coast trade north of the Columbia. The barks Cowlitz, Columbia, Vancouver, and the schooner Cadboro crossed the bar of the Columbia more frequently than any other vessels from 1836 to 1848. The captains engaged in the English service were Eales, Royal, Home, Thompson, McNeil, Duncan, Fowler, Brotchie, More, Darby, Heath, Dring, Flere, Weyington, Cooper, McKnight, Scarborough, and Humphreys, who were not always in command of the same vessel. There was the annual vessel to and from England, but the others were employed in trading along the coast, and between the Columbia River and the Sandwich Islands, or California, their voyages extending sometimes to Valparaiso, from which parts they brought the few passengers coming to Oregon.
The first American vessel to enter the Columbia after the arrival of the missionaries was the brig Loriot, Captain Bancroft, in Dec. 1836; the second the Diana, Captain W. S. Hinckley, May 1837; the third the Lausanne, Captain Spaulding, May 1840. None of these came for the purpose of trade. There is mention in the 25th Cong., 3d Sess., U. S. Com. Rept. 101, 58, of the ship Joseph Peabody fitting out for the Northwest Coast, but she did not enter the Columbia so far as I can learn. In August 1840 the first American trader since Wyeth arrived. This was the brig Maryland, Captain John H. Couch, from Newburyport, belonging to the house of Cushing & Co. She took a few fish and left the river in the autumn never to return. In April 1841
