< Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 22.djvu
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212 ANDREW FISH

{{left margin|4em|{{fine block|ceived. The good old Admiral and the captains of his fleet boldly refused to adopt a course which would have created a rupture between England and America. These noble upholders of the British Flag contemplated with true feeling the awful effect of the boom of cannon and the roll of musketry. To the chivalry and forbearance, therefore, of these wise and valiant men the two kindred nations owe much indeed. It would be an unpardonable omission were I not to make special mention of Captain Hornby, of the "Tribune," who, although under the most positive instructions from the Commander-in-Chief to declare war at once, took upon himself the responsibility of delaying the execution until the arrival of the Admiral, who was daily expected."[1]}}}}

For additional evidence I quote from Angus McDonald who has already been referred to. McDonald as Chief-factor at Fort Colville for the Hudson's Bay Company would not naturally be suspected of bias against Douglas. He writes:

"Although Governor Douglas and Colonel Hawkins, the British commissioner, were rather in favor of a war, the lucky arrival of Admiral Baynes muzzled their designs in a council of war held at Victoria, where he told the Governor that if ordered to attack the American camp on San Juan he would refuse doing it, and he hooted the idea of raising a war with America for such nonsense, it having as reported been started by a personal quarrel over a Hudson's Bay Company's pig."[2]

The Admiral seems to have shared in a measure the popular British opinion of the Company. Captain Hornby, writing to his wife on December 4, 1859, says:

"I hear that the Governor has got much praise in England for keeping peace with the Yankees. That is rather good, when one knows that he would hear of nothing but shooting them all at first and that peace was only preserved by my not complying with his wishes, as I felt he was all in the wrong from the start."[3]

This evidence is hardly impeachable. To Baynes, Douglas urged that he had "clear and definite instructions" from his government "to treat the islands in the Haro Archipelago as part of the British Dominion"; but, as Baynes pointed out

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  1. ↑ Macdonald's British Columbia and Vancouver Island, London 1862, p. 257.
  2. ↑ Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 8, p. 195.
  3. ↑ Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 8, p. 195 (note).
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