tana and Idaho;
south, under Peter Skene Ogden, as far as Utah and Nevada and
California; along the coast south as far as Monterey, under Tom Mackay,
whose father had been murdered on the _Tonquin_ and whose widowed
mother had married M'Loughlin; north, through New Caledonia, under
James Douglas--'Black Douglas' they called the dignified, swarthy young
Scotsman who later held supreme rule on the North Pacific as Sir James
Douglas, the first governor of British Columbia. If one were to take a
map of M'Loughlin's transmontane empire and lay it across the face of a
map of Europe, it would cover the continent from St Petersburg to
Madrid.

The ruler of this vast domain was one of the noblest men in the annals
of the fur trade. John M'Loughlin was a Canadian, born at Riviere du
Loup, and he had studied medicine in Edinburgh. The Indians called him
'White Eagle,' from his long, snow-white hair and aquiline features.
When M'Loughlin reached Oregon--by canoe two thousand miles to the
Rockies, by pack-horse and canoe another seven hundred miles {118}
south to the Columbia--two of the first things he saw were that
Astoria, or Fort George, was too near the rum of trading schooners for
the well-being of the Indians, and that it would be quite possible to
raise food for his men on the spot, instead of transporting it over two
watersheds and across the width of a continent. He at once moved the
headquarters of the company from Astoria to a point on the north bank
of the Columbia near the Willamette, where he erected Fort Vancouver.
Then he sent his men overland to the Spaniards of Lower California to
purchase seed-wheat and stock to begin farming in Oregon in order to
provision the company's posts and brigades. It was about the time that
his wheat-fields and orchards began to yield that some passing ocean
traveller asked him: 'Do you think this country will ever be settled?'
'Sir,' answered M'Loughlin, emphasizing his words by thumping his
gold-headed cane on the floor, 'wherever wheat grows, men will go, and
colonies will grow.' Afterwards, when he had to choose between loyalty
to his company and saving the lives of thousands of American settlers
who had come over the mountains destitute, these words of his were
quoted against him. He {119} had, according to the directors of the
company, favoured settlement rather than the fur trade.

[Illustration: Fort Vancouver. From a print in the John Ross Robertson
Collection, Toront