John Jacob Astor's attempt to plant a trading-post at Astoria
[Footnote: Irving, Astoria.] had been defeated by the treachery of
his men, who, at the opening of the War of 1812, turned the post
over to the British Northwest fur-traders. The two great branches of
the Columbia, the one reaching up into Canada, and the other pushing
far into the Rocky Mountains, on the American side, constituted
lines of advance for the rival forces of England and the United
States in the struggle for the Oregon country. The British traders
rapidly made themselves masters of the region. [Footnote: Coues
(editor), Greater Northwest.] By 1825 the Hudson's Bay Company
monopolized the English fur-trade and was established at Fort George
(as Astoria was rechristened), Fort Walla-Walla, and Fort Vancouver,
near the mouth of the Willamette. Here, for twenty-two years, its
agent, Dr. John McLoughlin, one of the many Scotchmen who have built
up England's dominion in the new countries of the globe, ruled like
a benevolent monarch over the realms of the British traders.
[Footnote: Schafer, Pacific Northwest, chap. viii.] From these
Oregon posts as centers they passed as far south as the region of
Great Salt Lake, in what was then Mexican territory.

While the British traders occupied the northwest coast the Spaniards
held California. Although they established the settlement of San
Francisco in the year of the declaration of American independence,
settlement grew but slowly. The presidios, the missions, with their
Indian neophytes, and the cattle ranches feebly occupied this
imperial domain. Yankee trading-ships gathered hides and tallow at
San Diego, Monterey, and San Francisco; Yankee whalers, seal-
hunters, and fur-traders sought the northwest coast and passed on to
China to bring back to Boston and Salem the products of the far