18 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



deal successfully with savage tribes and rival traders, the ability 

 to organize forces, insignificant in number, so as to withstand 

 the attacks of blood-thirsty Indians bent on plunder and revenge 

 or to take the aggressive when it seemed politic to do so, called 

 for brains and bravery far above the average, and when these 

 seemed wanting no man held a position of responsibility for long. 

 With gun or pistol always within easy reach they were prompt to 

 defend themselves, and seldom hesitated to take the initiative 

 when treachery was found. They were sent out not only to buy 

 furs, but to monopolize the trade, and, honest in their dealings 

 with one another, they were not over-scrupulous in their dealings 

 with rivals. They held the country for Britain, however, and had 

 they not been there it is doubtful whether Canada would not have 

 ended at the Rocky mountains. 



The first attempts at agriculture north of San Francisco and 

 west of the Rockies were made at Fort Colville in 1825, but the soil 

 was dry and irrigation unthought of, so the results were not 

 encouraging. Agriculture was in a way forced upon the Hudson's 

 Bay Company. The early history of this great company in the 

 northwest is its history in British Columbia and Oregon. It is 

 doubtless true that when the fur-trade of the northwest was 

 threatened by the arrival of settlers the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 through its officials, did all that it could to minimize the agricul- 

 tural possibilities of the country, but in the earlier years little 

 attempt was made to grow either grain or vegetables, and anyone 

 who has visited the remote Hudson's Bay posts of the present day 

 will understand the reason. These posts are fur-trading posts, 

 and the lives of the traders differ very little from those of the 

 natives. Their food is game and fish and the fruits of the forest. 

 To clear the land, to plant and harvest crops, required time that 

 could be ill spared from the needs of the trade, for the duties of a 

 collector of furs took him far from his post; and at the season when 

 crops would require attention the business of the fur-trade might 

 require his presence hundreds of miles away. If this be true 

 to-day how much more difficult it was in the early years of the 

 last century to plant and care for crops when that whole vast 

 district was in charge of only a score or so of men, whose sole 

 object in life was to collect furs for the company. No trust or 

 monopoly of these times had such power over its employees as 

 was wielded by the old fur-trading companies, and on the other 

 hand it may be said that the loyalty of the Company's servants 



