Many wild fruits are to be met with in the territory, that would be very desirable for cultivation in the gardens of the States. Among these are a very large and delicious strawberry, the service berry, a kind of whortleberry, and a cranberry growing on bushes four or five feet in height. The crab apple, choke cherry, and thornberry are common. Of the wild animals, there are the white tailed, black tailed, jumping and moose deer; the elk; red and black and grey wolf; the black, brown, and grisly bear; {249} the mountain sheep; black, white, red and mixed foxes; beaver, lynxes, martin, otters, minks, muskrats, wolverines, marmot, ermines, wood-rats, and the small curly-tailed short eared dog, common among the Chippeways. Of the feathered tribe, there are the goose, the brant, several kinds of cranes, the swan, many varieties of the duck, hawks of several kinds, plovers, white eagles, ravens, crows, vultures, thrush, gulls, woodpeckers, pheasants, pelicans, partridges, grouse, snowbirds, &c. In the rivers and lakes are a very superior quality of salmon, brook and salmon trout, sardines, sturgeon, rock cod, the hair seal, &c.; and in the bays and inlets along the coast, are the sea otter and an inferior kind of oyster. The trade of Oregon is limited entirely to the operations of the British Hudson Bay Company. A concise account of this association is therefore deemed apposite in this place. A charter was granted by Charles II, in 1670, to certain British subjects associated under the name of “The Hudson’s Bay Company,” in virtue of which they were allowed the exclusive privilege of establishing {250} trading factories on the Hudson’s Bay and its tributary rivers. Soon after the grant, the Company took possession of the territory, and enjoyed its trade without opposition till 1787; when was organized a powerful rival under the title of the “North American Fur Company of Canada.” This company was chiefly composed of Canadian-born subjects—men whose native energy and thorough acquaintance with the Indian character, peculiarly qualified them for the dangers and hardships of a fur trader’s life in the frozen regions of British America. Accordingly we soon find the North-westers outreaching in enterprise and commercial importance their less active neighbours of Hudson’s Bay; and the jealousies naturally arising between parties so situated, led to the most barbarous battles, and the sacking and burning each others posts. This state of things in 1821, arrested the attention of Parliament, and an act was passed consolidating the two companies into one, under the title of “The Hudson’s Bay Company.”[62]