As The Tonquin Was To Coast To The North, To Trade For Peltries
At The Different Harbors, And To Touch At Astoria On Her Return
In The Autumn, It Was Unanimously Determined That Mr. M'Kay
Should Go In Her As Supercargo, Taking With Him Mr. Lewis As
Ship's Clerk.
On the first of June the ship got under way, and
dropped down to Baker's Bay, where she was
Detained for a few
days by a head wind; but early in the morning of the fifth stood
out to sea with a fine breeze and swelling canvas, and swept off
gaily on her fatal voyage, from which she was never to return!
On reviewing the conduct of Captain Thorn, and examining his
peevish and somewhat whimsical correspondence, the impression
left upon our mind is, upon the whole, decidedly in his favor.
While we smile at the simplicity of his heart and the narrowness
of his views, which made him regard everything out of the direct
path of his daily duty, and the rigid exigencies of the service,
as trivial and impertinent, which inspired him with contempt for
the swelling vanity of some of his coadjutors, and the literary
exercises and curious researches of others, we cannot but applaud
that strict and conscientious devotion to the interests of his
employer, and to what he considered the true objects of the
enterprise in which he was engaged. He certainly was to blame
occasionally for the asperity of his manners, and the arbitrary
nature of his measures, yet much that is exceptionable in this
part of his conduct may be traced to rigid notions of duty
acquired in that tyrannical school, a ship of war, and to the
construction given by his companions to the orders of Mr. Astor,
so little in conformity with his own.
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