The whole Hudson's Bay Company concern appears like a great barrel, bale, or box of goods, put up in London, and marked for a certain district, servants and clerks sent along with the bales, and boxes, and barrels of rum, to gather up all the furs and valuable skins they can find all over the vast country they occupy, then bale up these furs and skins and send them to London, where another set of clerks sell them and distribute the profits on the sale of the furs. As to the value of the soil, timber, minerals, or any improvements they have ever seen or made in the country, they are as ignorant as the savages of the country they have been trading with. _This ignorance is real or willful._ The oaths of the two witnesses to which I have referred show this fact beyond a doubt, they having been the longest in the service, and attained a high position, and should know the most of its business and policy. There is one other American witness that has given his testimony in the case of Puget Sound Agricultural Company _v._ United States. He came to this country in 1853. In cross-interrogatory 55, he is asked: "In your opinion, did not the agents of this company afford great protection to the first settlers of this section of country by the exercise of their influence over the different Indian tribes?" _Ans._--"In my opinion, the officers of the company, being _educated gentlemen_, have always exerted whatever influence they might have had with the Indians to protect the whites of all nations in the early settlement of the country." This opinion is expressed by a gentleman having no knowledge of the policy and proceedings of the company in relation to all American settlers previous to his arrival in the country. He concludes that because he, in his official transactions, having no occasion to ask or receive the company's protection, was treated kindly, all others must have been, as the company's officers were, in his opinion, "educated gentlemen." In answer to this last official American gentleman and his officious opinion, as expressed on oath in this case, I will quote a statement, under oath, of one of our old _bed-rock_ settlers, who came on to the west side of the Rocky Mountains in 1829, twenty-four years previous to the last witness, who pretends to know so much. _Int. 7._--"What influence did the Hudson's Bay Company exercise over the Indians in the section where you operated, with reference to the American trappers and traders? State such facts as occur to you in this connection."