20 The Fur Traders. 



of the Pacific coast line would now belong to Great 

 Britain." 



Washington Irving in his "Astoria'" enters fully into 

 the details of the struggle of the Pacific Fur Company to 

 hold the advantages it had gained on the Pacific Coast; 

 but it is sufficient for our purpose to note the circumstances 

 of its organization and failure ; and it only remains for us 

 to say that on December 12th. 1813, Captain Black of the 

 British sloop-of-war Raccoon raised the British standard 

 over the fort, and took possession of the establishment and 

 the country in the name of his sovereign, changing the 

 name of Astoria to Fort George. 



From that time the Northwest Company reigned supreme 

 west of the Rocky Mountains until 1821, when it was ab- 

 sorbed by the Hudson's Bay Company, which thus became 

 the representative of all previous fur companies, and after 

 entering into an agreement with Russia for the lease of 

 Alaska, in 1839, established trading posts from the Bering 

 Sea to San Francisco; remaining in full and undisturbed 

 possession of the fur trade of the Northwest until it was 

 obliged to relinquish its exclusive rights by the treaty of 

 1846. It was not until 1860, however that the Hudson's 

 Bay Company finally abandoned its various establish- 

 ments in Oregon and "Washington, and transferred all its 

 movable property not disposed of to Fort Victoria on 

 Vancouver Island. 



In 1863, the old shareholders, alive to the signs of the 

 times, allowed themselves to be persuaded to sell out to a 

 "New Company of Proprietors," who later sold their rights 

 — real and imaginery — to the Dominion of Canada, for three 

 hundred thousand pounds. Since that time, though they 

 still continue to exist as a powerful merchant company 

 exerting a dominating influence on the fur trade, the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company have been "lords of the soil" only over 

 an area of a mile around each one of their forts ; and even 

 the district of which Edmonton is the center and in which 

 for many years they held exclusive trading privileges is 

 "open country," where other large firms have established 

 trading posts or agencies, and where individual collectors 

 travel from point to point purchasing the catch of trap- 

 pers who do not come to the posts. Every year the number 

 of skins passing directly from the hands of the collectors 



