the desertion of his
men. The consequence of this step would have been his taking possession
of the country, and displaying the British flag, as an emblem, of that
possession and a guarantee of protection hereafter. He found himself too
late, however, and the stars and stripes floating over _Astoria_. This
note is not intended by the author as an after-thought: as the opinion
it conveys was that which we all entertained at the time of that
gentleman's visit.]

The natives, who till then had surrounded us in great numbers, began to
withdraw, and very soon we saw no more of them. At first we attributed
their absence to the want of furs to trade with; but we soon learned
that they acted in that manner from another motive. One of the secondary
chiefs who had formed a friendship for Mr. R. Stuart, informed him, that
seeing us reduced in number by the expedition lately sent off, they had
formed the design of surprising us, to take our lives and plunder the
post. We hastened, therefore, to put ourselves in the best possible
state of defence. The dwelling house was raised, parallel to the
warehouse; we cut a great quantity of pickets in the forest, and formed
a square, with palisades in front and rear, of about 90 feet by 120; the
warehouse, built on the edge of a ravine, formed one flank, the dwelling
house and shops the other; with a little bastion at each angle north
and south, on which were mounted four small cannon. The whole was
finished in six days, and had a sufficiently formidable aspect to deter
the Indians from attacking us; and for greater surety, we organized a
guard for day and night.

Toward the end of the month, a large assemblage of Indians from the
neighborhood of the straits _Juan de Fuca_, and _Gray's Harbor_, formed
a great camp on Baker's Bay, for the ostensible object of fishing for
sturgeon. It was bruited among these Indians that the Tonquin had been
destroyed on the coast, and Mr. M'Kay (or the chief trader, as they
called him) and all the crew, massacred by the natives. We did not give
credence to this rumor. Some days after, other Indians from Gray's
Harbor, called _Tchikeylis_, confirmed what the first had narrated, and
even gave us, as far as we could judge by the little we knew of their
language, a very circumstantial detail of the affair, so that without
wholly convincing us, it did not fail to make a painful impression on
our minds, and keep us in an excited state of feeling as to the truth
o