Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/410

394 Quite the contrary, indeed. What he had to tell of his adventures in Mexico and California must have been just the sort of tales to while away winter evenings in Bachelors' Hall.

I fancy the situation was about this: McLoughlin was prepared to dislike Kelley even without Governor Figueroa's condemnation, on account of his published denunciation of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was under no obligation to admit him to the society of the fort, although he would not have him suffer sickness or hunger under the shadow of its walls. The fact that he was an American while giving him a patriotic excuse, if not motive, for ignoring Kelley 's claims on his compassion, also, on the other hand, furnished a politic motive for indulging his natural humanity. For at that time there were several Americans being entertained at Vancouver—Nathaniel J. Wyeth, a trader from Boston, the missionary party of four, and two scientists, J. K. Townsend, naturalist, and Thomas Nuttall, botanist, who had traveled under the protection of Wyeth 's company as far as the hunting grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company, which had then taken them in charge. The treaty-rights of Wyeth were not disputed, nor the scientific observations of the scholars opposed. It was Kelley, as colonizer and defamer of the company, who was unwelcome, even after it was evident that there was no stain on his character.

This was perfectly understood by Kelley, and it was not McLoughlin's disapproval of him which wounded his sensitive pride. It was the conduct of his own countrymen,—of Wyeth whose name was on his colonization company's roll; of the Harvard men, his neighbors, who had for years been familiar with his writings, and of the missionary Lees, who had been inspired, so he contended, by his labors to undertake theirs of Christian-