Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/467

416 near approach to starvation for a year or two. Here were many persons expecting to live by agriculture who had neither seed nor farming implements with which to begin. Many had large families, and how to feed them was a question which interested not only the immigrants but the Hudson's Bay Company. McLoughlin was not slow to comprehend the situation. With feelings inimical to the great corporation, these men would never see their children starve while there was plenty within the walls of the company's storehouses. Both his heart and his reason pointed the course to be pursued. Immediate necessities must be relieved, and they must be encouraged to begin at once their only road to self-support, the opening of farms. Accordingly, without waiting to be asked, he proposed both these remedies for the threatening disaster. He offered credit to the destitute, furnishing them what was absolutely required for the present, and seed and farm-tools with which to begin their plantations. Thus he not only disarmed, to a great extent, the antagonism of the western men, but made himself defender against the arrogance of the missionaries by excelling them in kindness toward their own countrymen, establishing at the same time a balance of power between British and American, and between old and new colonists.

Notwithstanding this timely help the privations of the immigrants were great. Burnett has stated that during the first two years his family were often without meat for weeks at a time, and sometimes without bread, while occasionally both were wanting at the same time. Milk and potatoes, with butter, made a