Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/109

Rh time," was the reply, "but his company required the payment of large sums that he advanced on credit, and that left him with little."

Mr. Matthieu understands that besides his salary of ₤2,500 per year, he held two shares in the stock of the company, the largest allowed to one individual outside the chartered corporation. His business also included, besides the fur trade of Oregon, extensive operations in British Columbia and Alaska, salmon export to the Sandwich Islands, and milling at Oregon City. At one time he made a proposition to build the canal and locks at the Willamette Falls, at his own expense; but was refused the charter. (F. X. M.)

Returning to Mr. Matthieu's first years in Oregon: He remained with Lucier until 1844. For two years afterwards he lived on French Prairie proper, which is some six miles back from the river. He was engaged in labor during this time, building houses, and making wagons for the settlers. Life he found carried on here in simple style, log cabins being the rule, furnished with big fireplaces, made of sticks, plastered over with the tough black clay found underneath the prairie sod. Few had stoves, and the cooking was done mainly over the coals, or in kettles swung on a crane.

In 1846 he was married, and took a square mile of land a mile from the river, back of the Butte, upon which he has lived now for fifty-four years. It is a noble old place, having both prairie and woodland, and abundant water, and commands beautiful prospects in every direction. His wife was Rose, a daughter of Louis Osant, a Hudson's Bay employee and trapper. The earliest recollections of Mrs. Matthieu are of journeyings on horseback with the parties of her father or of Michel La Framboise, one of the most trusted leaders of the Hudson's Bay trappers. She recalls how, on one of these