"Within a few years several Americans, of whom the writer is one, have crossed the Rocky Mts., to the mouth of the Columbia, with objects entirely unconnected with trade or commerce. Mine was a desire to see a new country, a love of adventure for its own sake, and an enthusiastic fondness for natural history. The party with which I traveled left Independence, Mo., about the latter part of April, 1834, and arrived at the British Fort, Vancouver, in September, having performed the whole journey on horseback. From this time until October, 1836, with the exception of the first winter which I passed at the Sandwich Islands, my residence was in the Territory of Oregon. Dr. McLoughlin, chief factor, treated me with uniform and singular kindness, supplying all my wants and furnishing me with every facility in the prosecution of my plans. This is, I believe, the uniform character of the Superintendents of British forts in that country. Travelers, naturalists, and all who are not traders are kindly and hospitably treated, but the moment a visitor is known to trade a beaver skin from an Indian, that moment he is ejected from the community. The company has a sum of money amounting to several thousand pounds sterling, laid aside at Vancouver for the sole purpose of opposing all who may come to interfere with its monopoly, by purchasing at exhorbitant prices all the furs in possession of the Indians, and thus forcing the settler to come to terms or driving him from the country. If it be an individual who is thus starved into submission he then usually clears a piece of land on the Willamette River, takes an Indian wife, and purchases furs of the natives, which, by previous contract, he is bound to sell to the company at an advance which is fixed by the governor. Ft. Vancouver, the principal trading post of the Oregon, stands on the north bank of the river, about 90 miles from the mouth. The fort consists of several dwellings, storehouses, workshops, etc., all of frame arranged together in quadrilateral form, and surrounded by a stockade of pine logs about 20 ft. high. The Ft. has no bastions, and contains no armament. There are, to be sure, 4 great guns frowning in front of the governor's mansion, 2 long 18s and 2 9-pounders, but two of them have long been spiked and the others are unfit for service.