{239} Before we close the account of this year’s campaign, we must take up the subject of the ship _Beaver_, Capt. Sowle, from New York, with the annual supplies, who arrived at Astoria, as we have before noticed, on the 9th of May, after a voyage of 212 days. The _Beaver_ remained at the infant establishment of Astoria till the 4th of August. On the 6th, she crossed the bar with some difficulty, having grounded twice, which so frightened old Sowle, the captain, that he was heard to say “I’ll never cross you again.” Having cleared the bar, she left the Columbia on a three months’ cruise along the coast, towards the Russian settlements at Kamtschatka, intending to be back again about the latter end of October, and as had been settled upon in the council of partners. Mr. Hunt was on board. It may, however, be easily inferred that this was a part of Astor’s general plan, that the man at the head of affairs should accompany the ship on her coasting trip. It was so with the _Tonquin_, as well as with the _Beaver_; and this again goes far to prove how little Astor cared about the Columbia, or those carrying on the business there, when the man at the head of the establishment was liable to be removed from his important charge, and sent as a peddling supercargo on board the ship, merely for the purpose of receiving a few seal-skins from old Count Baranhoff, at Kamtschatka.[85] This, as I have already said, was done by Astor’s orders; for he, in his arm-chair at New York, regulated all the springs of action at {240} Astoria, just as if he had been on the spot. Work well, work ill, his commands remained like the laws of the Medes and Persians: there was no discretionary power left to alter them. The ship, therefore, with Mr. Hunt on board, reached her destination without any accident or delay; visited New Archangel, Sitka, and St. Paul’s, taking in at these places a valuable cargo of furs, chiefly seal-skins; but was detained in these boisterous seas much longer than had been calculated upon, for she had not left the most northern of these parts, which is St. Paul’s, before the beginning of November.[86]