History of British Columbia 17921887 Author:Hubert Howe Bancroft General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1887 Original Publisher: The History company Subjects: British Columbia History / Canada / General Travel / Canada / General Travel / Canada / Western Provinces Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos ... more »or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. CAMOSUN AND ESQUIMALT. 1842. Necessities Of A Northern Metropolitan Post -- Encroachments Of Set- Tlers On The Columbia -- The Dividing Line -- Growing Importance Of Agriculture -- The Question Of Locality -- A Northern Rendez- Vous For Whalers -- The Southern End Of Vancouver Island -- Its Advantageous Position -- Douglas Surveys The Harbors -- Camosf. v And Esquimalt Compared -- Report Of Douglas. Several causes united at this juncture to render necessary the building of a metropolitan post somewhere to the northward. When John McLoughlin came to Astoria in 1824, he saw at once that the mouth of the Columbia was not the proper place for the chief factory, or general distributing depot of his company on the Northwest Coast. Here as elsewhere the adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay must have absolute control of the country, its lands and waters, its forests and prairies, its aborigines and its wild beasts. It must be all or nothing. Competition might be endured along the seaboard where the savages were blood-thirsty and jealous, and where the silent sailing of the ships neither disturbed the game nor materially changed the relative attitude of the inhabitants. Astoria might be the best location for a fortress in repelling foreign invasion, but there was something more to be feared than foreign invasion. In fact, the thought of forcible entry from the sea in such numbers as to do much injury gave little con...« less