With These Conditions Mr. Ogden
Was Fain To Comply.
Upon this the great Tamaahmaah deputed his
favorite, John Young, the tarpaulin governor of Owyhee, to
proceed with a number of royal guards, and take possession of the
wreck on behalf of the crown.
This was done accordingly, and the
property and crew were removed to Owyhee. The royal bounty
appears to have been but scanty in its dispensations. The crew
fared but meagerly; though, on reading the journal of the voyage,
it is singular to find them, after all the hardships they had
suffered, so sensitive about petty inconveniences, as to exclaim
against the king as a "savage monster," for refusing them a "pot
to cook in," and denying Mr. Ogden the use of a knife and fork
which had been saved from the wreck.
Such was the unfortunate catastrophe of the Lark; had she reached
her destination in safety, affairs at Astoria might have taken a
different course. A strange fatality seems to have attended all
the expeditions by sea, nor were those by land much less
disastrous.
Captain Northrop was still at the Sandwich Islands, on December
20th, when Mr. Hunt arrived. The latter immediately purchased,
for ten thousand dollars, a brig called the Pedler, and put
Captain Northrop in command of her. They set sail for Astoria on
the 22d January, intending to remove the property from thence as
speedily as possible to the Russian settlements on the northwest
coast, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the British.
Such were the orders of Mr. Astor, sent out by the Lark.
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