KATHARINE

322

B.

JUDSON

"Fort George, Columbia River, 7th October, 1818.

"To Captain Frederick Hickey, H. M. Ship Blossom. "Sir:

"In compliance with your request conveyed to me in your communication of the 4th instant, of being furnished with an exact account of the state and condition of this settlement on its restitution, together with such further information as I might deem of importance to be communicated to His Majesty's Ministers, I shall

who (myself

first

advert to the

excepted) were and

number

of

its

inhabitants

under either written or verbal agreements, as servants of the North- West Company consisting of two gentlemen clerks, and one surgeon of Scotch parents, one overseer, seventeen engagees, including mechanics, and mostly Canadians twenty-six natives of Owhyhee, and one Indian boy (native of the soil) who added to two Owhyhees absent, and sixteen trappers, Canadians and Iroquois still

are,

employed by the Company among the surrounding tribes to hunt skins, form a grand total of sixty-six persons, exclusive of women and children who may properly be said to belong to the settlement; and with regard to the minor establishments

in the interior of this River, supplied

from and dependent

number

of people employed, the extent of our trade, annual produce, prospects, and mode of conducting it, it would too far exceed my intended limits to detail, and other-

hereon, the

is not altogether unknown to Government. to the progressive improvements and material changes the settlement has undergone subsequent to our purchasing

wise

I

presume

"As

from the American Company in October, 1813, and which have been extended with immense labour and heavy expenses, you will be enabled to form an imperfect idea from the extent it occupied under that concern, the nature and properties of buildings raised with precipitancy to protect persons and prop-

it

from the injuries of the weather, as well as the attacks of the Natives, and the prospects which a five years quiet

erties