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AN AMERICAN EXPLORING SQUADRON 181

July? "laughed the doctor. "I have business over that way and may run down to look at your ships."

A few days later Dr. McLoughlin went over to the Sound, arriving, however, a day too late for the celebration. At this moment, while the doctor was gone, the Rupert's governor, Sir George Simpson, came sweeping down the Columbia with his retinue of fancy voyageurs and his buglers and bagpipers on his journey around the world, Douglas did the honors of the fort.

Sir George had been head of the old Hudson's Bay Company before the coalition, and, naturally, had never acquired perfect confidence in this independent northwester who never took the trouble to cross the mountains to his annual council at Norway House on Winnipeg.

"Ah! "was Sir George's mental comment as he took off his tall felt chimney-pot hat and scratched the bald spot on top of his head. "Last year McLoughlin entertained the missionaries. This year I find him hobnobbing with Americans in their gunboats on the Sound."

Everything encouraged Sir George's suspicions. He was angry on account of the squadron, angry on account of Dr. McLoughlin's courteous hospitality to it, angry on account of the banquet to which the Americans were invited on the doctor's return to the fort. Sir George, in narrow-waisted, swallow-tailed coat, occupied the chair of honor. There was an aristocratic scantness to the tight-fitting sleeves; a corresponding fulness to the immaculate puffed and ruffled shirt-front above the waistcoat of salmon-colored satin. Behind his chair the pipers played. Dr. McLoughlin kept up the conversation. Under the rim of his gold-bowed glasses