Page 44 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

30.

to Astoria and would pick up the furs which had been collected
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for the voyage to Canton.

By constructing its major outpost at the mouth of the

Columbia River, the Pacific Fur Company (or Astor) would con­
trol a large part of the Northwest fur trade. Of the major

rivers and sounds along the Northwest Coast, American traders

had discovered that the shores of the Columbia River provided

one of the few areas free of Russian or English domination.

Entrance into the River though posed difficult problems for

ocean vessels. At its mouth, the Columbia was only a

half mile across. The strong and rapid current of the river

in meeting the ocean at this narrow mouth had formed a bar,

passage over which was "always difficult, and sometimes dan­

gerous." Vessels often had to wait up to a week on the out­

side for the proper winds to cross the bar. Once inside the

river, a vessel discovered "a wide, open bay" from which the

Columbia stretched for thirty or forty miles indented by deep

inlets. All along the river lived Indian tribes who traded
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furs. An establishment located on Baker's Bay, at the mouth

of the Columbia, was in a perfect position to amass a large

trade upriver with the Indians and simultaneously load its own

vessels for the voyage to Canton.

In 1810 Astor despatched his ship "Tonquin" with a

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rrving, Astoria, p. 30.
35
Gabriel Franchere, A Voyage to the Northwest Coast of
America, ed. by Milo Milton Quaife (Chicago, 1954), pp. 54-55.
Shaler, "Journal of a Voyage between China and the Northwest
Coast," p. 138. Irving, Astoria, pp. 83-84.