Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/110

100 and rooms at the fort. Others were quartered out of the fort. I soon gave Doctor McLoughlin and Captain Wyeth to understand that I was on my own hook, and had no further connection with the party. We were received with the greatest kindness as guests, which was very acceptable, or else we would have had to hunt for subsistence. But not liking to live gratis, I asked the doctor (he was a physician by profession) for some employment. He repeatedly answered me that I was a guest and not expected to work. But after much urging, he said if I was willing he would like me to teach his own son and the other boys in the fort, of whom there were a dozen. Of course I gladly accepted the offer. So the boys were sent to my room to be instructed. All were half-breeds, as there was not a white woman in Oregon. The doctor's wife was a "Chippewa," from Lake Superior, and the lightest woman was Mrs. Douglas, a half-breed, from Hudson Bay. I found the boys docile and attentive, and they made good progress. The doctor often came into the school, and was well satisfied and pleased. One day he said: "Ball, anyway you will have the reputation of teaching the first school in Oregon." So I passed the winter of 1832 and 1833.

The gentlemen of the fort were pleasant and intelligent. A circle of a dozen or more sat at a well-provided table, which consisted of partners, the clerks, Captain Wyeth, and myself. There was much formality at the table. Men waited on the table, and we saw little of the women, they never appearing except perhaps on Sunday or on horseback. As riders they excelled.

The national boundary had not been settled beyond the mountains at this time. The traders claimed the river would be the boundary. The south side the American. The fur trade was their business, and if an American vessel came up the river, or coast, they would bid up on furs, and if necessary a price ten to one above their usual prices. So American traders soon got entirely discouraged.

The voyage around Cape Horn to England was so long to take supplies, that the company brought a bull and six cows from California, and in seven years said they had raised from this start four hundred head of cattle. They plowed fields and raised good wheat. Salmon was so abundant that it was thrown away, to get some old imported salt beef. They had not as yet killed any of their stock.

In the spring of 1833 Captain Wyeth and two other of the men started on their return home across the plains. Others of the party went into the employ of the Hudson Bay Company.

I wrote letters home and sent by the Hudson Bay Express. Leaving Fort Vancouver March 20 each year, this express went north to about latitude 52°, then by men on snowshoes over the mountains, which takes them two. weeks. Then they take bark canoes on the La Bashe (or Athabasca), which flows north; descend it a distance, and make a short portage at Port Edmonton to the Saskatchawan River, down