ident designs to monopolize it, if possible, and to drive off the Americans, who have heretofore been its chief creators and conductors.
I have been informed, by one of the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, that the agricultural and commercial operations of the English at Puget Sound, Columbia River, California, and Sandwich Islands, are carried on, not actually by the Hudson's Bay Company, but by what may be termed a branch of it by gentlemen who are the chief members and stockholders of said company, and who have associated themselves under the firm Pelly, Simpson & Co., in London, and with a capital of more than $15,000,000!
Seeing these companies, then, marching with iron footsteps to the possession of the most valuable portion of country in the Northern Pacific, and considering, too, the immense amount of their capital, the number, enterprise, and energy of their agents, and the policy pursued by them, great reason is there to fear that American commerce in that part of the world must soon lower its flag. But, sir, it is to be hoped that our government will soon do something to break up the British settlements in the Oregon Territory, and thereby destroy the source from which now emanates the dire evils to American interests in the western world. In the endeavor to bring about that desirable object, you have done much; and every friend to his country, every person interested in the commerce of the Pacific, must feel grateful for the valuable services rendered them by you.
With great respect, your obedient servant,
HON. LEWIS F. LINN, Senator of the United States, Washington.
[From the Ti'ibune (New York), July 4, 1842.]
SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION.
The Missouri Reporter of the fourteenth instant contains a notice of the expedition of Lieutenant Fremont, of the United States Topograpical Engineers, to the base of the Rocky Mountains, in the latitude of the Platte and Kanzas rivers, with a view to ascertain positions and localities, to explore the face of the country, and to make the government fully acquainted with that remote and important point of our extended territory now becoming of so much greater interest from the extension of our trade to the northern parts of Mexico and California, and the settlement growing up in the valley of the Columbia River.
