it had a cove to shelter the boats necessary for a trading establishment. This peninsula had truly the appearance of a huge tongue. Astoria had been built nearer the ocean, but the advantages offered by Tongue point more than compensated for its greater distance. Its soil, in the rainy season, could be drained with little or no trouble; it was a better position to guard against attacks on the part of the natives, and less exposed to that of civilized enemies by sea or land in time of war.
All the hands who had returned from the interior, added to those who were already at the Fort, consumed, in an incredibly short space of time the small stock of provisions which had been conveyed by the Pacific Fur Company to the Company of the Northwest. It became a matter of necessity, therefore, to seek some spot where a part, at least, could be sent to subsist. With these views I left the fort on the 7th February {222} with a number of men, belonging to the old concern, and who had refused to enter the service of the new one, to proceed to the establishment on the Willamet river, under the charge of Mr. Alexander Henry, who had with him a number of first-rate hunters.[117] Leaving the Columbia to ascend the Willamet, I found the banks on either side of that stream well wooded, but low and swampy, until I reached the
