USA > California > The history of Oregon and California & the other territories of the northwest coast of North America > Part 16
USA > Oregon > The history of Oregon and California & the other territories of the northwest coast of North America > Part 16
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On the 8th of December Bering expired, worn down by sickness, fatigue, and disappointment, and thirty of the crew were consigned to their graves on the island before the ensuing summer. The sur- vivors recovered their health, and obtained a sufficiency of food, by hunting the sea and land animals, which were found in great num- bers on and about the shores. As soon as the mild season returned, they collected the pieces of the wreck, of which they made a small vessel ; and, having provisioned it as well as they could, they set sail from the western side of the island on the 14th of August, 1742. Two days after, they made the coast of Kamtchatka ; and, continuing along it towards the south, they, on the evening of the 27th, landed, forty-six in number, at the place in the Bay of Avatscha from which they had taken their departure fifteen months before. The island, on which they had thus passed more than nine months, is situated about eighty miles from the eastern shore of Kamtchatka, between the latitudes of 54₺ and 553 degrees, and has, ever since its dis- covery, been called Bering's Isle ; it consists entirely of granite mountains.
Such were the occurrences, and the unfortunate termination, of Bering's voyage.
Tchirikof, likewise, pursuing an eastward course, discovered land in the latitude of 56 degrees. It was a mountainous territory, with steep, rocky shores, extending on the ocean from north to south ; and, the weather being unfavorable for approaching it, ten men were sent in a boat to make examinations. As these did not return, after some time, nor make any signal from the shore, six others were despatched in search of them, whose reappearance was also ex- pected in vain; and Tchirikof was obliged, at length, to quit the
134
VOYAGE OF TCHIRIKOF.
[1741.
coast without learning what had befallen any of them. In the mean time, the scurvy had broken out among his crew ; and as the stormy season was approaching, he resolved to hasten back to Kamt- chatka. His voyage thither was attended with great difficulties, and before the 8th of October, when he reached Avatscha, he had lost twenty-one men by sickness, including the distinguished French naturalist Delile de Croyere, in addition to the sixteen whose fate was undetermined. The land discovered by him must have been, agreeably to the account given of its latitude and bearings, the western side of one of the islands, named, on English maps, the Prince of Wales's Archipelago, the inhabitants of which are remark- able for their fierceness and hatred to strangers. It is, therefore, most probable that the men sent ashore by Tchirikof were murdered as soon as they landed.
These discoveries of the Russians excited some attention in Europe, where they were made known, first, by the periodical pub- lications of France, England, and Germany, and afterwards more fully, by the scientific men and historians of those countries. In 1750, a long memoir on the subject was read by the French geog- rapher Delisle, before the Academy of Sciences of Paris,* wherein he gives the highest praise to the Russian navigators, and pro- nounces, as proved by their expeditions, " that the eastern portion of Asia extends under the polar circle, towards the western part of America, from which it is separated by a strait about thirty leagues wide; this strait is often frozen over, but, when free from ice, it affords communication for vessels into the Frozen Ocean."
The Russian government did not, however, consider the dis- coveries of its subjects as sufficiently important to justify the imme- diate despatch of other vessels in the same direction; and no further attempts to explore the North Pacific were made by its authority until 1766. In the mean time, accidental circumstances, connected with Beri ig's last voyage, had drawn the attention of individuals in Eastern Asia to the islands seen by that navigator, on his return towards Kamtchatka; and the part of the ocean in which those islands lie had been thoroughly searched.
It has been mentioned, that the crew of Bering's vessel, during the period passed by them in the island, near Kamtchatka, had sub- sisted chiefly on the flesh of the sea and land animals found there. The skins of these animals, particularly of the black foxes and sea otters, were preserved by the men, and carried with them to Kamt-
* Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, for 1750, p. 142.
135
VOYAGES OF RUSSIAN FUR TRADERS.
1760.]
chatka, where they were sold at such high prices, that several of the seamen, as well as other persons, were induced immediately to go to the island and procure further supplies. In the course of the voyages made for this purpose, other islands, farther east, which had been seen by Bering and Tchirikof, were explored, and found to offer the same advantages ; and the number of persons employed in seeking furs was constantly increasing.
The trade thus commenced was, for some time, carried on by individual adventurers, each of whom was alternately a seaman, a hunter, and a merchant; at length, however, some capitalists in Siberia employed their funds in the pursuit, and expeditions to the islands were, in consequence, made on a more extensive scale, and with greater regularity and efficiency .* Trading stations were estab- lished at particular points, where the furs were collected by persons left for that object ; and vessels were sent, at stated periods, from the ports of Asiatic Russia, to carry the articles required for the use of the agents and hunters, or for barter with the natives, and to bring away the skins collected.
The vessels employed in this commerce were, in all respects, wretched and insecure, the planks being merely attached together, without iron, by leathern thongs ; and, as no instruments were used by the traders for determining latitudes or longitudes at sea, their ideas of the relative positions of the places which they visited were vague and incorrect. Their navigation was, indeed, performed in the most simple and unscientific manner possible. A vessel sailing from the Bay of Avatscha, or from Cape Lopatka, the southern ex- tremity of Kamtchatka, could not have gone far eastward, without falling in with one of the Aleutian Islands, which would serve as a mark for her course to another ; and thus she might go on, from point to point, throughout the whole chain. In like manner she would return to Asia, and, if her course and rate of sailing were observed with tolerable care, there could seldom be any uncertainty as to whether she were north or south of the line of the islands. Many vessels were, nevertheless, annually lost, in consequence of
" The islands discovered and frequented by the Russian fur traders were those called the Aleyutsky, or Aleutian, extending in a line nearly along the 53d parallel of latitude, from the south-west extremity of the peninsula Aliaska, across the sea, to the vicinity of Kamtchatka. Aliaska was, likewise, supposed to be an island, until 1778, when its connection with the American continent was ascertained by Cook. The inhabitants of these islands were a bold race, who, for some time, resisted the Russians, but were finally subdued, after their numbers had been con- siderably reduced.
136
VOYAGES OF RUSSIAN FUR TRADERS. [1760.
this want of knowledge of the coasts, and want of means to ascer- tain positions at sea ; and a large number of those engaged in the trade, moreover, fell victims to cold, starvation, and scurvy, and to the enmity of the bold natives of the islands. Even as lately as 1806,* it was calculated that one third of these vessels were lost in each year. The history of the Russian trade and establishments on the North Pacific, is a series of details of dreadful disasters and suffer- ings ; and, whatever opinions may be entertained as to the humanity of the adventurers, or the morality of their proceedings, the courage and perseverance displayed by them, in struggling against such appalling difficulties, must command universal admiration.
The furs collected, by these means, at Avatscha and Ochotsk, the principal fur-trading ports, were carried to Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia, whence some of them were taken to Europe ; the greater portion were, however, sent to Kiakta, a small town just within the Russian frontier, close to the Chinese town of Maimatchin, through which places all the commerce between these two empires passed, agreeably to a treaty concluded at Kiakta, in 1728. In return for the furs, which brought higher prices in China than any where else, teas, tobacco, rice, porcelain, and silk and cotton goods, were brought to Irkutsk, whence all the most valuable of those articles were sent to Europe. These transportations were effected by land, except in some places, where the rivers were used as the channel of conveyance ; no commercial exportation having been made from Eastern Russia, by sea, before 1779: and, when the immense distances,t between some of the points above mentioned, are considered, it becomes evident that none but objects of great value, in comparison with their bulk, at the place of their con- sumption, could have been thus transported, with profit to those engaged in the trade, and that a large portion of the price paid by the consumer must have been absorbed by the expense of trans- portation. A skin was, in fact, generally worth, at Kiakta, three times as much as it cost at Ochotsk.
The Russian government appears to have remained almost en- tirely unacquainted with the voyages and discoveries of its subjects,
" Krusenstern's journal of his voyage to the North Pacific.
+ In the following table, each number expresses nearly the distance, in geographical miles, between the places named on either side of it : -
St. Petersburg, 460, Moscow, 1500, Tobolsk, 1800, Irkutsk, 1550, Yakutsk, 600, Ochotsk, 1300, Petropawlowsk, on the Bay of Avatscha; Irkutsk, 300, Kiakta, 1000, Pekin.
137
VOYAGE OF KRENITZIN AND LEVASCHEF.
1768.]
engaged in the fur trade of the North Pacific, until 1764, when the empress Catharine II. ordered that proper measures should be taken to procure exact information with regard to the islands, and the American coasts, opposite her dominions in Asia. This am- bitious sovereign had then just ascended the throne, and was, or chose to appear, determined to carry out the views of Peter the Great for the extension of the Russian empire eastward beyond the Pacific.
Agreeably to the orders of Catharine, Lieutenant Synd sailed, in 1766, from Ochotsk, and advanced northward, along the coast of Kamtchatka, as far as the 66th degree of latitude; and, in the fol- lowing year, he made another voyage in the same direction, in which he is supposed to have landed on the American continent. Very few particulars respecting his expeditions are, however, known, as the Russian government appears to have suppressed all accounts of them, for reasons which have been suggested, but which it is unnecessary here to repeat.
In 1768, another expedition was commenced, for the purpose of surveying the islands. With this object, Captains Krenitzin and Levaschef quitted the mouth of Kamtchatka River, in July, each commanding a small vessel ; and, after cursorily examining Bering's Isle, and others near the coast of the peninsula, they stretched across to the Fox Islands, the largest and easternmost of the Archi- pelago, among which they passed the winter. Before the ensuing summer, nearly half the crews of both vessels had perished from scurvy ; and, when the navigators returned to Kamtchatka, in October, 1769, they had done nothing more than to ascertain, ap- proximately, the geographical positions of a few points in the Aleu- tian chain. It appears, indeed, that Krenitzin had employed him- self exclusively in collecting furs, with which his vessel was laden on her arrival from her voyage. The only valuable information ob- tained by the Russian government, through this costly expedition, related to the mode of conducting the fur trade between Kamt- chatka and the islands ; upon which subject the reports of Levaschef were curious and instructive, and served to direct the government in its first administrative dispositions, with regard to the newly- discovered territories.
The expedition of Krenitzin and Levaschef was the last made by the Russians in the North Pacific, for purposes of discovery or investigation, before 1783. In 1771, however, took place the first voyage from the eastern coast of the empire, to a port frequented
18
-
138
VOYAGE OF BENYOWSKY.
[1771.
by the ships of European nations ; and, strange to say, this voyage was conducted under the Polish flag! In the month of May of that year, a few persons, chiefly Poles, who had been exiled to Kamtchatka for political reasons, succeeded in overpowering the garrison of the small town of Bolscheretsk, on the south-west side of Kamtchatka, where they were detained, and escaped to sea in a vessel then lying in the harbor. They were directed in their enterprise by Count Maurice de Benyowsky, a Hungarian, who had been an officer in the Polish service, and from whose history of his own life, afterwards published, all the accounts of their adventures are derived. From these accounts, it appears that the fugitives, on entering the Pacific, were driven northward as far as the 66th degree of latitude ; during which part of their voyage, they fre- quently saw the coasts of both continents, and visited several of the Aleutian Islands. At Bering's Isle they found a number of fugitive exiles, like themselves, established in possession, under the command of a Saxon ; and at Unalashka, the largest of the group, they discovered crosses, with inscriptions, erected by Krenitzin, in 1768. I roceeding thence towards the south, they touched at several places in the Kurile, Japan, and Loochoo Islands, as also at Formosa; and, at length, in September, they arrived at Canton, where they carried the first furs which ever entered that city by sea .*
A circumstantial account of the principal voyages and discoveries of the Russians, made between 1741 and 1770, drawn from original sources, was published at St. Petersburg, in 1774, by J. L. Stæhlin, councillor of state to the empress .; These records are curious and interesting, but they throw very little light on the great geographical questions relative to that part of the world, which then remained unsolved ; and the accompanying chart only serves, at present, to show more conspicuously the value of the discoveries effected by other nations. According to this chart, the American coast ex- tended, on the Pacific, in a line nearly due north-west from Cali-
* Memoirs and Travels of Maurice Augustus Count de Benyowsky, written by himself, published at London, in 1790. Benyowsky's account of his escape from Kamtchatka, and his voyage to China, were for some time discredited ; but they have since been confirmed, at least as regards the principal circumstances. He afterwards had a variety of adventures, especially in Madagascar, of which he pretended to be the rightful sovereign ; and he was, at length, killed at Foul Point, in that island, in May, 1786, while at the head of a party of Europeans and natives, in a contest with the French from the Isle of France.
t Description of the newly-discovered Islands in the Sea between Asia and America. A translation of the greater part of this work may be found in the last edition of Coxe's History of Russian Discoveries.
139
ERRORS IN THE EARLY RUSSIAN MAPS.
1776.]
fornia, to the 70th degree of latitude, and was separated from the opposite coast of Asia by a wide expanse of sea, containing many islands, several of which correspond in name with those of the Aleutian Archipelago, though the positions assigned to them are far from correct : the largest of the islands there represented, called Alascha, lies under the 67th parallel, between the western- most point of America and the most eastern of Asia. In the beau- tiful map of the Russian empire, published at St. Petersburg by Treschot and Schmidt, in 1776, no land, except some islands, ap- pears within twenty-five degrees of longitude east of Kamtchatka. Other maps, however, which appeared at a much earlier period, offer a view more nearly correct of the extreme north-western coasts of America, although the geographer who constructed them must have been guided almost entirely by suppositions.
The errors of latitude, in all these maps, were very great, amount- ing to ten degrees, in some instances ; and those of longitude were, as may be readily supposed, much more considerable. Indeed, before 1778, when Cook made his voyage through the North Pacific, the differences in longitude, between places in that part of the ocean, had never been estimated otherwise than by the dead reckoning, which, however carefully observed, cannot afford accurate results ; nor had any relation, which could be considered as nearly correct, been established between the meridian of any point on the Atlantic and that of any point on the North Pacific.
140
CHAPTER VI.
1763 TO 1780.
Great Britain obtains Possession of Canada - Journey of Carver to the Upper Mis- , sissippi - First Mention of the Oregon River -- Inaccuracy of Carver's Statements - Journeys of Hearne through the Regions west of Hudson's Bay - Voyage of Captain Cook to the North Pacific-His important Discoveries in that Quarter, and Death - Return of his Ships to Europe ; Occurrences at Canton during their Stay in that Port.
WHILST the Russians were thus prosecuting the fur trade on the north-westernmost coasts of America, the British were engaged in the same pursuit on the north-eastern side of the continent.
It has been already mentioned that King Charles II. of England, in 1669, granted to an association of gentlemen and merchants of London the possession of all the territories surrounding Hudson's . Bay, and the exclusive trade in those regions, with the object, ex- pressed in the charter, of encouraging his subjects to prosecute the search for a north-west passage for ships from that sea to the Pacific Ocean. Under the protection of this charter, the Hudson's Bay Company erected forts and trading establishments on the shores of the bay, and carried on an extensive and profitable trade with the natives of that part of America, to the annoyance of the French, who, also, claimed the country as part of Canada, and more than once dislodged the British traders. It was, indeed, provided by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1714, that the Hudson's Bay territories should belong to the former nation, and that commissaries should be appointed, on both sides, to settle the line separating those terri- tories from Canada : but no such boundary was ever fixed, by commissaries or otherwise, as will be shown hereafter; * and the limits of the Hudson's Bay territories remained undetermined in 1763, when Canada, with all the other dominions of France in North America, east of the Mississippi, were ceded to Great Britain by the treaty of Paris.
* Sce chap. xiii., and Proofs and Illustrations, letter F.
141
CANADA CEDED TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1766.]
How far the Hudson's Bay Company, also, endeavored to fulfil the intention expressed in the charter, of promoting the search for a north-west passage, it is unnecessary here to inquire ; suffice it to say, that, at the end of a century from the date of the con- cession, the question, as to the existence of such a channel, was nearly in the same state as at the commencement of that period. Hudson's Bay had been navigated by Middleton, in 1741, to the 66th degree of latitude, beyond which it was known to extend; Baffin's Bay had not been visited since the beginning of the seven- teenth century, when it was examined imperfectly to the 74th parallel. The territories west of both these seas were entirely unex- plored ; but accounts, which seemed to merit some credit, had been received from the Indians, of great rivers and other waters in that direction. The desired communication with the Pacific might, therefore, exist; or the Pacific, or some navigable river falling into it, might be found within a short distance of places on the Atlantic side of the continent, accessible to vessels from Europe : and the determination of these questions became infinitely more important to Great Britain, after the acquisition of Canada.
The region extending south-west, from Hudson's Bay to the great lakes, and the head waters of the Mississippi, had long been frequented by the traders from Canada and Louisiana, and had been partially surveyed by French officers and missionaries, by whom several journals, histories, and maps, relating to those countries, had been given to the world. This region was also visited, imme- diately after the transfer of Canada to Great Britain, by an Amer- ican, whose travels are here mentioned, because he is supposed to have thrown much light upon the geography of North-west America by his own observations, and by information collected from the Indians of the Upper Mississippi.
This traveller, Captain Jonathan Carver, of Connecticut, who had served with some credit in the war against the French, partic- ularly in the country about Lakes Champlain and George, set out from Boston in 1766, and proceeded, by way of Detroit and Michilimackinac, to the regions of the Upper Mississippi, now forming the territories of Wisconsin and Iowa, where he spent two years among the Indians. His object was, as he says in the introduction to his narrative, "after gaining a knowledge of the manners, customs, languages, soil, and natural productions, of the different nations that inhabit the back of the Mississippi, to ascer- tain the breadth of the vast continent which extends from the
142
TRAVELS OF CARVER.
[1766.
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, in its broadest part, between the 43d and the 46th degrees of northern latitude. Had I been able," he continues, "to accomplish this, I intended to have proposed to government to establish a post in some of those parts, about the Strait of Anian, which, having been discovered by Sir Francis Drake, of course belongs to the English. This, I am convinced, would greatly facilitate the discovery of a north-west passage, or communication between Hudson's Bay and the Pacific Ocean." This extensive plan he was, however, unable to pursue, having been disappointed in his intention to purchase goods, and then to pursue his journey from the Upper Mississippi, "by way of the Lakes Dubois, Dupluie, and Ouinipique, [the old French names of Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, and Lake Winnipeg,] to the head waters of the Great River of the West, which falls into the Strait of Anian." *
This Great River of the West is several times mentioned by Carver, under the name of Oregon, or Origan. In another part of his introduction, he refers to his account, in the journal, "of the situation of the four great rivers that take their rise within a few leagues of each other, nearly about the centre of the great con- tinent, viz., the River Bourbon, [Red River of the north,] which empties itself into Hudson's Bay, the waters of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the River Oregon, or River of the West, that falls into the Pacific Ocean at the Straits of Anian." At the con- clusion of his work, also, in speaking of a project which had been formed, in 1774, by himself, Mr. Whitworth, a member of the British parliament, and other persons in London, to cross the American continent, he says that they would have " proceeded up the River St. Pierre, [St. Peter's,] and from thence up a branch of the River Messorie, till, having discovered the source of the Oregon, or River of the West, on the other side of the summit of the lands that divide the waters which fall into the Gulf of Mexico from those that fall into the Pacific Ocean, they would have sailed
* Travels throughout the interior Parts of North America, in 1766-8, by Jona- than Carver, London, 1778. It consists of- an introduction, showing what the author had done and wished to do - a journal of his travels, with descriptions of the countries visited, and - an account of the origin, habits, religion, and languages, of the Indians of the country about the Upper Mississippi, which account occupies two thirds of the work, and is extracted almost entirely, and, in many parts, rerbatim, from the French journals and histories. The book was written, or rather made up, at London, at the suggestion of Dr. Lettsom and other gentlemen, and printed for the purpose of relieving the wants of the author, who, however, died there, in misery, in 1780, at the age of 48.
143
OREGON, OR RIVER OF THE WEST.
1766.]
down that river, to the place where it is said to empty itself, near the Straits of Anian."
From these declarations, it has been supposed, by many, that Carver was the first to make known to the world the existence of the great stream since discovered, and named the Columbia, which drains nearly the whole region, on the Pacific side of America, between the 40th and the 54th parallels of latitude ; and that stream is, in consequence, frequently called the Oregon. On examining the journal of the traveller, however, we find no further mention of, or allusion to, his river than is contained in the following pas- sages : " From these nations, [called by him the Naudowessies, the Assinipoils, and the Killistinoes,] together with my own obser- vations, I have learned that the four most capital rivers on the continent of North America - viz., the St. Lawrence, the Missis- sippi, the River Bourbon, and the Oregon, or River of the West, (as I hinted in my introduction) - have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is rather farther west. This shows that these parts are the highest in North America ; and it is an instance not to be paralleled in the other three quarters of the world, that four rivers of such magnitude should take their rise together, and each, after running separate courses, discharge their waters into different oceans, at the distance of two thousand miles from their sources ; for, in their passage from this spot to the Bay of St. Lawrence east, to the Bay of Mexico south, to Hudson's Bay north, and to the bay at the Straits of Anian west, each of these traverse upwards of two thousand miles." The elevated part, to which Carver here alludes, is no otherwise described by him than as being near the Shining Mountains, " which begin at Mexico, and, continuing northward, on the back, or to the east, of California, separate the waters of those numerous rivers that fall into the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of California. From thence, continuing their course still northward, between the sources of the Mississippi and the rivers that run into the South Sea, they appear to end in about 47 or 48 degrees of north latitude, where a number of rivers arise, and empty themselves either into the South Sea, into Hud- son's Bay, or into the waters that communicate between these two seas."
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