The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866 that was founded by Richard Clement Moody, who was selected to 'found a second England on the shores of the Pacific', who was Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. Prior to the arrival of Moody's Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, the Colony's supreme authority was its Governor James Douglas, who was the Governor of the neighbouring colony of Vancouver Island. This original colony of British Columbia did not include either the Colony of Vancouver Island, or the regions north of the Nass River and Finlay River, or the regions east of the Rocky Mountains, or any of the coastal islands, but did include the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands and from 1863 the Stikine Territory. The colony was in 1866 incorporated with the Colony of Vancouver Island to create the new Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871). Background The explorations of James Cook and George Vancouver, and the concessions of Spain in 1794 established British claims over the coastal area north of California. Similar claims were established inland via the explorations of such men as John Finlay, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, Samuel Black, and David Thompson, and by the subsequent establishment of fur trading posts by the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). However, until 1858, the region which now comprises the mainland of the Province of British Columbia was an unorganised area of British North America comprising two fur trading districts: New Caledonia, north of the Thompson River drainage; and the Columbia District, located south of the Thompson and throughout the basin of the Columbia River. With the signing of the Treaty of Washington in 1846, which established the US border along the 49th parallel, the HBC moved the headquarters of its western operations from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River (present day Vancouver, Washington) to the newly established Fort Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island and the surrounding Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia were organized as a crown colony in 1849. Meanwhile, the mainland continued to function under the de facto administration of the HBC, whose chief executive, James Douglas, was also governor of Vancouver Island. The non-Indigenous mainland population during this time never exceeded about 150 at Fort Victoria, mostly HBC