Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/125



rosary. Weather-cracked voices joined in the canticles learned long ago on the banks of the St. Lawrence.

Liberal as he was in religious matters, Dr. McLoughlin felt a peculiar home feeling in that rude little church with its tawdry pictures of the saints and its candles before the Virgin. It carried him back to his native hamlet at Riviere du Loup among the maples of Canada. These old servants were indeed his brethren. He loved them as he loved the memory of his mother and the pictures of childhood. After mass the children lingered for a word of recognition, the old men loitered to consult about private affairs and recount losses and trials to the patriarchal governor, who took a personal interest in every one of them. Whatever he told them to do, that they did. Obedience is one of the first virtues of the French Canadian, learned long ago at the foot of Mother Church. If they were industrious he praised them, and let them have whatever they needed from the stores at Fort Vancouver. If they were shiftless and wasted the harvest season in horse-racing and idle games, he came down with denunciations that frightened them back into rectitude. Hearts stood still like a whipped school-boy's when they heard Dr. McLoughlin's loud voice bidding them, "Go to work! Go to work! Go to work! "There were no written laws; the governor settled their disputes arbitrarily. Whatever he said, that was law in the valley Willamette.

They were a careless, thoughtless, happy people, these Canadian farmers of old Champoeg, quiet, simplehearted, free from fear and envy, temperate, for the governor allowed no ale in the valley, honest, for there was nothing to steal. Free from cares of Church and State, no political issue troubled them, no church schism. There were few books and less English. Their