ptember
stockades and houses had been completed, and as many as fifty men had
come to live at the new fort, to which the name Victoria was finally
given. Victoria became the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company on
the Pacific. It was unique as a fortified post, in that it was built
without the driving of a single nail, wooden pegs being used instead.

[Illustration: The fort of the Hudson's Bay Company, Victoria, B.C.
From a photograph by Savannah.]

By 1849 the discovery of gold in California was bringing a rush of
overlanders. There had been rumours of the discovery of precious
metals on the Fraser and in East Kootenay. The company became alarmed;
and Sir John Pelly, the governor in England, and Sir George Simpson,
the governor in America, went to the British government with the
disquieting question: What is to hinder American colonists rolling
north of the boundary and establishing right of possession there as
they did on the Columbia? By no stretch of its charter could the
Hudson's Bay Company {130} claim feudal rights west of the Rockies.
What, my Lord Grey asks, would the company advise the British
government to do to avert this danger from a tide of democracy rolling
north? Why, of course, answers Sir John Pelly, proclaim Vancouver
Island a British colony and give the company a grant of the territory
and the company will colonize it with British subjects. The proposal
was laid before parliament. It would be of no profit to follow the
debate that ensued in the House of Commons, which was chiefly 'words
without knowledge darkening counsel.' The request was officially
granted in January 1849; and Richard Blanshard, a barrister of London,
was dispatched as governor of the new colony. But as he had neither
salary nor subjects, he went back to England in disgust in 1851, and
James Douglas of the Hudson's Bay Company reigned in his stead.

But fate again played the unexpected part, and rang down the curtain on
the fur lords of the Pacific coast. A few years previously Douglas had
seen M'Loughlin compelled to choose between loyalty to his company and
loyalty to humanity. A choice between his country and his company was
now unexpectedly thrust on the reticent, careful, {131} masterful
Douglas. In 1856 gold was discovered in the form of large nuggets on
the Fraser and the Thompson, and adventurers poured into the
country--20,000 in a single year. Douglas foresaw that this meant
British empire on the Pa