Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/202

188 the formative period unless we include General Jos. Lane.

To resume my narrative: we finished our job for Mr. Burnett on Saturday evening, and he paid me with a $15.00 note for legal services rendered to a young settler of good repute, which I later gave for a suit of cotton clothing to an emigrant of our train, which, we learned on Sunday by a letter from Dr. McLoughlin to General McCarver, had reached the Dalles. The letter also stated that General Gilliam's family had been furnished with a boat and had come down without delay, and that the young men who had applied for the use of a boat, would find one tied up at Linnton for their use. Accordingly, we three, Clark, Crockett and Minto, met at the residence of Mr. Henry Buxton, an English farmer from Rupert's land with whom General McCarver boarded, and started on foot over the newly cut road to Linnton. There we found Jacob Hoover and his family, who had recently landed from the boat we had come to use. We were invited to> partake of a swan dinner, which we could not well refuse, and then started on our twelve-mile row to Fort Vancouver—three of us in a seven man boat. We arrived at the fort gates between 8 and 9 P. M., and had trouble to gain admittance and then more trouble to get speech with Mr. Douglas, Dr. McLoughlin being absent at Oregon City. We were finally sent outside the gates to pass the night in a cabin occupied by two men; one, a Lowland Scotch blacksmith, a maker of the cheap axes, hatchets and knives used in the trade; the other, an honest, faithful herdsman from the Orkney Islands, whose three years' contract at 17 English pounds a year was nearly up, when he expected to return home and marry the lassie whose present of a pocket testament he carried near his heart. He could see no opportunity in a square mile of good land in Oregon. We learned this while sharing the contract breakfast of salt salmon and potatoes—cheap and wholesome food.

We were still eating when at the toll of the bell the gates opened. The grand figure of Dr. McLoughlin appeared on the stoop of his residence as we entered the gates. He beckoned