Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/202

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Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor.

was mate, and that he was only at that time an apprentice to the trade of a seaman. Mr. Bancroft also gives the date of the Owyhee's arrival as 1830, instead of 1829, as on page 341 of Volume I, "Northwest Coast," he had previously done.

Of Captain Dominus, we learn on page 636 of Volume II, "Northwest Coast," that in 1834 he was on the coast in the bark Bolivar Liberator, and that he made an agreement with the Russian-American Company, August 8, by which he was permitted to hunt sea otter on the California and Southern Oregon coasts. A few days later an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company effected a lease of a shore strip from the Russians which excluded the American trader. This did not prevent Dominus from returning in the summer of 1835, or from purchasing sea otter in defiance of Russians and English, using rum to overcome the fidelity of the Indians to their former masters. Russian, English, and American fur hunters were sadly at outs this year on the Northwest coast, but Dominus probably secured a valuable cargo, as he paid more for skins than his rivals. It was, however, his last adventure on the Coast of North America, and his end was as before related.

FRANCES FULLER VICTOR.