blocked up by snow, along the north bank of the Columbia to Vancouver, where they crossed the river and proceeded to the Wallamette, and brought down their wives and children and property on rafts, in canoes which they hired from the Indians, and in boats belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, lent them by me. Yet with the assistance I lent them, they still suffered a great deal of misery, and spent a great deal of time, and the last passed Vancouver only at Christmas, and if, as some years is the case, the Columbia had frozen on the beginning of December, these immigrants were so destitute of provisions, and so poorly clad, many of them would have perished.
The Rev. Father Deros, [Demers] of the Society of Jesus, came this year with two other fathers of the same society and three laymen and established a mission in Colville District. Lieut. Fremont, of the United States service, came with a party to examine the country. After purchasing supplies from the Hudson's Bay Company, he rejoined his party at The Dalles, and proceeded across land to California.
In 1844 the immigrants amounted to 1,475 men, women, and children. They came by the same route, and were assisted by me with the loan of boats, as their predecessors of last year.
The Americans applied this year again to the Canadians in the Wallamette (who were about settlers) to join them and form a temporary government, to which they acceded, as they saw from the influx of immigrants it was absolutely necessary to do so to maintain peace and order in the country. We had the pleasure to see her Majesty's ship, Modeste, Capt. Baillie. She anchored opposite Vancouver. The Belgian brig, Indefatigable, also anchored there. She was the only vessel that hitherto came under that flag, and brought the Rev. Father
