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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1886)
02 THE WEST SHORE. FUR TRADE OF THE PACIFIC COAST. Reports by the early explorers of the Atlantic Const of tho rich furs to 1)0 procured from the nntives, and the lioM that other nd more valuable nrticlos could be ob tiinml iu trade, 1ml to the organization ill Eligliilnl, ill lfififl, of a oompiiny to engine in Hint profitable busi ness. They applied for a roynl chnrter to Charles the II, who had but recently amended the throne of his mur dered father. The king onrnestly desired the discovery of a passage from the Atlantic to tho Pacific (then kriown as the "South Ken"), by going around America to the north. Hucli a passage was believed to exist, and was known as the ".Straits of Anian," to which nnme mod ern historians have prefixed the word "fabulous." Upon the agreement of tho company to diligently search for this passage the charter was granted. The two-fold ob ject of tho oompnny was expressed in the charter, which created "Tho Company of Adventurers of England Trad ing into Hudson's Hay," organized " for tho discovery of a near passage into the South Sea, and for the finding of some trade in furs, minerals and other considerable commodities. " Of the vast region whoso water shed is ink) Hudson's Bay.f this company was given absolute control to the exclusion of all jMirsons whomsoever. All rou were forliidden to "visit, hunt frequent, trade, trafilo or adventure " therein without permission of tho company, and tho annual rental to tho Crown for this magnificent empire was ' two elks and two black beav ers," to secure which tho king must go upm the land ami collect for himself. There are few rent receipts on file among the pip'rs of the company. This was tho found ing of tho organization known iu history as the " Hud son's Hay Company," a name vividly impressed upm tho memory of pioneers of Oregon and Washington. Tho oompany soon learned that tho discovery of tho Northwest Passage would 1h highly detrimental to its in terests, ami consequently, instead of searching for one as tho King had expected, it exert.nl all it inlluenoe to pre vent one from Is-ing discovered. Tho result was that a whole century passed Is-foro the Knglinh Government made a vigorous effort to discover the Straits of Anian Meanwhile the Hudson's Hay Company occupied tho granted territory and kept ,M Government and every one else not cmml with tho organism,, in complete igm.rai.csof that wgion, i which it was doing a busi wm which had assumed giglj0 prt.p.rtions. Such WMU,eorgan1Mtio f that company which, century and a half Inter, ruled the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska. The jmmoers in the far trade of tho Pacific were Rus siaus. The .llustnou. Peter the Great had gradually ex tended h.s dominion. the of H.Wia nt, In. empire was washed by the Waters of tho I ae.fic, besting ,, the rn , f The fur trad of Siberia Wamo valuable and 31? a n. iu mi M dlwmwJ i, IMIl , i . mw Hum U UK, ! C1l talk. b.1 frUU,mtmi terially to the great revenues of the Tsar. His next step was to discover a water passage into the Pacifio from the great Arctio Ocean which washed his dominions on the north. Just such a passage as the English were desirous of finding by soiling west from the Atlantic, ho propuwju to discover by sailing eastward towards the same com mon point He ordered vessels to be constructed at Archangel, on the White Sea, and on the coast of Earn tchatka. The former were to search eastward for a pas sage into the Pacific, and the latter were to hunt for the same waterway by following northward along the Pacifio Coast of Asia. Peter died before his plans could be put in operation, but they were faithfully carried out by his two successors, Catherine and Anne. A series of explor ations wore carried on from Kamtchatka, resulting in the discovery of Bohring's Straits, in 1728, by Vitus Bohring, a Danish navigator who had charge of the Russian expe dition. In 1732 another expedition discovered tho main land of Alaska, and in 1741 Behring reached the Amer ican Const in the vicinity of Mount St. Elias, a nnme which ho bestowed upon that ginnt peak which rears its snowy crest nonrly twenty thousand feet above the sea. Upon the return voyage they were driven out of their course and many of the crew died from scurvy. They finnlly sighted a small island lying between the Aleutian Archi polngo and Kamtchatka, and running their vessel close in they lnnded with the intention of spending the winter. The island, now known as ' Behring's Isle," is a small speck upon the the bosom of the sea, consisting of a few barren granite peaks thrust up from the water, their sides continually lnshed by the surf and upon which the the waves dash furiously when storms sweep across the surface of the ocenn. Their house was constructed of the broken timbers of their vessel, the St. Peicr, which wag wrecked upon the rocks during a gnle iramediatety after they disembnrked, and whose broken pieces were washed up by the surf. Before spring Behring and thirty of his followers found a grave on those water-bound rocks, UMn the return of spring the survivors constructed a small vessel from the wreck of the St. Peter, and in August succeeded in reaohing the Bay of Avatscha on the Kamtchatkan Coast, the point from which they had sailed. Although half a century elapsed before a full account of this fatal but most important voyage was published, the general features of it were known in England soon after its sad termination. The unfortunate crew had lived upon the flesh of fur-bearing animals probably seal and otter-and their skins had served for beds and clothing. In these furs were the survivors clad when they roturnod, and their value led to the dispatch of sev eral privnte 'expeditious by Russian traders, to visit the islands lying to the eastward in search of furs. In this way tho fur trade of the Pacifio wns begun, and in a few years reached prortionB fully as great as that of the .Hudson's Bay Compnny on tho Atlantic Coast For years this hnzardoiiB traffic was carried on by individual adventurers, but at length Siberian capitalists formed