The Fur Traders. 23 



a guarantee of its assistance in transferring power from 

 the old to the new regime. What better proof can we ask 

 that on the whole those in control of the operations of 

 the Hudson's Bay Company have borne their honors 

 meekly, and exercised their great power for the good of 

 the people in general as well as for the best interests of 

 the company they served. 



That John Jacob Astor, in organizing The South West 

 Company, and the Pacific Fur Company, was also animated 

 by a higher motive than the mere promptings of a personal 

 ambition, is evidenced by the following extract from a 

 letter written to his partner, Mr. Hunt, at the time when 

 the treachery of associates, the chances of war, and the 

 machinations of the Northwest Company were threaten- 

 ing disaster to his enterprise on the Pacific coast. He 

 says: "Were I on the spot I should defy them all; but 

 as it is everything depends on you and the friends about 

 you. Our enterprise is grand and deserves success, and I 

 hope in God it will meet it. If my object was merely gain 

 of money I should say, save what you can and abandon 

 the place ; but under the conditions the very idea is a 

 dagger to my heart." If anything further is needed, to 

 prove that he thought at least as much of the effect that 

 the failure of his plans would have upon other interests, 

 public and private, as of any personal loss it would bring 

 to him, it is furnished in the words with which he received 

 the news of the sale of his Pacific coast properties to the 

 Northwest Company by McDougal, "I had rather lost all 

 by capture while trying to defend the fort." 



No one who has carefully read the history of the de- 

 velopment of the fur trade as it is related by Washington 

 Irving, George Bryce and Captain Chittenden, will ques- 

 tion the statement — that the men who formed, and con- 

 trolled the policies of the companies who laid the 

 foundations of this great commercial enterprise, were not 

 only captains of industry, but empire builders of the 

 highest order. No better illustration of this can be found 

 than the following brief sketch of Lord Stratheona's life, 

 and his connection with the Hudson's Bay Company. 



