"It is very easy to say, these are idle tales; they are tales--but such tales, that Parliament ought to make a searching investigation into their truth.... It is certain that Dr. McLoughlin has now left the Hudson's Bay Company, and has become _nominally_, what he seems to have been for years, _really_--an _American citizen_, living in the midst of an American population, which he collected around him, upon soil, to which he knew that his own country had, all along, laid claim." Sir Edward Belcher's exploring expedition was at Fort Vancouver in August, 1839. He insisted that the crews of his vessels should be supplied with fresh beef. Dr. McLoughlin was not then at Fort Vancouver. Probably he had not returned from his trip to England in 1838-9. Mr. Douglas, who was in charge, refused Belcher's request because the supply of cattle was not sufficient for that purpose. Fresh beef was supplied to Sir Edward Belcher and his officers. Commodore Wilkes and his exploring expedition were on the Oregon Coast in 1841. He did not ask for his crews to be supplied with provisions. He was grateful for the kind treatment of himself, his officers and men, by Dr. McLoughlin and other officers of the Hudson's Bay Company. Sir Edward Belcher, it seems, was not grateful.[70] In relation to the Red River immigrants, who arrived in 1841, the statement of Fitzgerald is mostly untrue. These settlers came to Oregon in 1841 under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company and settled on Nisqually Plains, near Puget Sound. These plains are almost sterile, being an enormous bed of very fine gravel mixed with some soil at the surface. It is easy to understand how these settlers were disappointed in living by themselves on the Nisqually Plains, when they could come to the Willamette Valley with its fertile soil and be near the settlers in the Willamette Valley. It must be borne in mind that when these Red River settlers went to the Willamette Valley, they were practically as much dependent on the Hudson's Bay Company and Dr. McLoughlin, as though they had stayed on the Nisqually Plains. Rev. Daniel Lee and Rev. J. H. Frost wrote a book entitled "Ten Years in Oregon," which was printed in New York in 1844. On page 216 of that work they say of these settlers from Red River: "They went to Nesqually, on Pugit's Sound; but, after spending a year, it was found that the land was of a very inferior quality, and that they could not subsist upon it. Thus, after having subjected themselves to many hardships, and privations, and losses, for almost two years, they had yet to remove to the Walamet Valley, as promising to remunerate them for their future toil, and make them forget the past. Accordingly most of them removed and settled in the Walamet in 1841-2." DOCUMENT R _Note on authorship of "History of Oregon" in Bancroft's Works; and sources of information for this monograph._