24 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



Hope; . . . at last doubled the cape under topsails, 

 . . . the deck one sheet of ice for six weeks, . . . our 

 sails one frozen sheet; . . . lost sight of the Isaac 

 Todd in a gale&quot; wrote MacDonald on the Raccoon. 



It will be remembered that Hunt s overlanders ar 

 rived at Astoria months after the Pacific Company s 

 ship. Such swift coasters of the wilderness were the 

 Nor Westers, this overland party came sweeping down 

 the Columbia, ten canoes strong, hale, hearty, sing 

 ing as they paddled, a month before the Raccoon had 

 come, six months before their own ship, the Isaac 

 Todd. 



And what did MacDougall do? Threw open his 

 gates in welcome, let an army of eighty rivals camp 

 under shelter of his fort guns, demeaned himself into 

 a pusillanimous, little, running fetch-and-carry at the 

 beck of the Nor Westers, instead of keeping sternly 

 inside his fort, starving rivals into surrender, or train 

 ing his cannon upon them if they did not decamp. 



Alexander Henry, the partner at the head of these 

 dauntless Nor Westers, says their provisions were 

 &quot;nearly all gone.&quot; But, oh! the bragging voyageurs 

 told those quaking Astorians terrible things of what the 

 Isaac Todd would do. There were to be British con 

 voys and captures and prize-money and prisoners of 

 war carried off to Sainte Anne alone knew where. The 

 American-born scorned these exaggerated yarns, know 

 ing their purpose, but not so MacDougall. All his 

 pot-valiant courage sank at the thought of the Isaac 

 Todd, and when the campers ran up a British flag he 

 forbade the display of American colours above Astoria. 

 The end of it was that he sold out Mr. Astor s interests 

 at forty cents on the dollar, probably salving his con- 



