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 the devices of his enemies. Little of that gratitude did he receive which is the heartiest praise to man. the holiest prayer to heaven. "Nil homine terra pejus ingratio creato," says Ansonius. Well might the settlers on the Willamette have profited by the jurisprudence of Lilliput where ingratitude was a capital crime. Informed of the accusations brought against him and the Hudson's Bay Company in the petition of 1843, he exclaimed indignantly: "Really, really, the citizens are themselves the best judges if we did so or not, and I am certain if they are so lost to a sense of what is due to truth as to make such an assertion, it is useless for me to say anything." "I am astonished," he adds, "that there should be one person in the country to say such a thing of me."

The milling company continued to make improvements upon the island part of McLoughlin's claim, while Abernethy, Waller, and others still resided on the site of the town. In the autumn of 1843 there arrived the first large immigration overland, of families, many of whom remained at Oregon City acquiring building-lots and making improvements. This aggregation of people and means at this place increased the determination of the missionaries to secure the land to themselves, and alarmed McLoughlin still more lest they should succeed.

Among the immigrants was one John Ricord, of tall, commanding person, insinuating address, and some legal knowledge, all shown off conspicuously by personal vanity. He signed himself "Counsel of the Supreme Court of the United States," whatever that might mean, and was both admired and laughed at by his fellow-travellers.