Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/86

Rh. Dr Gairdner made a study of the salmon of the Columbia River, and his authority on their habits is still high.

William Frazer Tolmie, his associate, was from the University of Glasgow, and made botany a study. He had been at Fort Vancouver but a few months when he was assigned to the post on Millbank Sound. Returning to Fort Vancouver in 1836, he served in the medical department for several years.

Thus we see that there was no lack of good society at Fort Vancouver. Besides the residents, there were many gentlemen scattered over the country at the different posts, and in the field as traders, leading trapping parties, and carrying on commercial warfare with the American companies, and usually getting the better of them, owing to a superior organization and a better quality of goods.

Prominent among the chief clerks who had charge of posts in the interior was Pierre C. Pambrun, for several years in charge of Fort Walla Walla, where he dispensed hospitality with a free hand.

Archibald McKinlay, who succeeded Pambrun at Walla Walla, was another Scotchman who had been in the service of the Northwest Company. Genial and stout-hearted, he was a worthy successor of the favorite Pambrun, and the friend and ally afterward of the American missionaries in the upper country. He possessed that very necessary acquirement in an Indian country, knowledge of the native character.