Jingoists in England wanted all of Oregon. Jingoists in America wanted all of British Columbia’s coast up to Sitka. Wise heads in England were willing that the boundary should be compromised at the north bank of the Columbia. Wise heads in America were willing to relinquish United States claims beyond the forty-ninth parallel; but the foolish catch cry of “Fifty-four forty or fight” was being used as an election dodge and stirred up ill feeling enough to prevent compromise on either side. While pompous statesmen, who knew absolutely nothing about Oregon, were deluging Congress and Parliament with orations on the subject of the boundary, ragged men and women, colonists in homespun, colonists many of them too poor for even homespun, with barefooted children, and men and women clad in buckskin, were settling the question in a practical way. They were not _talking_ about possessions. They were _taking_ possession. This was the situation as McLoughlin and Simpson laid it before the Governing Board in the winter of 1838-39. Now fur traders never yet welcomed colonists. The coming of the colonists means the going of the game; but something must be done to counteract these American settlers and if possible hold the Columbia River as a highway for the Hudson’s Bay brigades. The Puget Sound Agricultural Company was formed with Hudson’s Bay men as stockholders and McLoughlin as manager, to hold the country between Columbia River and Puget Sound--modern Washington--for the English. The capital was £200,000 in 2000 shares; but there never was any intention that the venture should pay. Very little of the capital was ever paid in. The aim was to hold a region as large as England and Scotland for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Coming back to Oregon, in 1839, with his son David, now a graduated doctor, McLoughlin sent his old trappers into the Cowlitz Valley as settlers, and had a farm of five thousand acres measured off for the Puget Sound Company. Here the stock was raised that supplied the inland posts with food. Hudson’s Bay men from Red River were sent overland to colonize the Puget Sound region. * * * * *