182 NAKRATIVE OF A JOURNEY 



any inconvenience from it. Although living in a state of the 

 most abject poverty, deprived of most of the absolute necessaries 

 of life, and frequently enduring the pangs of protracted starva- 

 tion, yet these poor people appear happy and contented. They 

 are scarcely qualified to enjoy the common comforts of life, 

 even if their indolence did not prevent the attempt to procure 

 them. 



On the afternoon of the 8th, we anchored off Fort George, as 

 it is called, although perhaps it scarcely deserves the name of a 

 fort, being composed of but one principal house of hewn boards, 

 and a number of small Indian huts surrounding it, presenting the 

 appearance, from a distance, of an ordinary small farm house 

 with its appropriate outbuildings. There is but one white man 

 residing here, the superintendent of the fort ; but there is probably 

 no necessity for more, as the business done is not very consider- 

 able^ most of the furs being taken by the Indians to Vancouver. 

 The establishment is, however, of importance, independent of its 

 utility as a trading post, as it is situated within view of the 

 dangerous cape, and intelligence of the arrival of vessels can be 

 communicated to the authorities at Vancouver in time for them 

 to render adequate assistance to such vessels by supplying ihem 

 with pilots, 6z;c. This is the spot where once stood the fort 

 established by the direction of our honored countryman, John 

 Jacob Astor. One of the chimneys of old Fort Astoria is still 

 standing, a melancholy monument of American enterprise and 

 domestic misrule. The spot where once the fine parterre over- 

 looked the river, and the bold stoccade enclosed the neat and 

 substantial fort, is now overgrown with weeds and bushes, and 

 can scarce be distinguished from the primeval forest which 

 surrounds it on every side. 



Captain Lambert, Mr. N. and myself visited the Indian houses 

 in the neighborhood. In one of them we saw a poor little boy 

 about three years of age who had been blind from his birth. He 



