Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/60

Rh my eyes, and the roast fish and potatoes were the first things I saw. I think it was the smell of something to eat that first aroused me. When I arose and threw back the covering, a mist seemed to arise from my body, there were puddles of water on the bed where I had lain, the bedding was as wet as if it had been dragged from the river, and yet I had slept soundly all night while a pouring rain had drenched my bed.

Dr. McLaughlin, of the Hudson Bay Company at Vancouver, had not known of our arrival until he visited our camp that morning. I well remember his kind face and pleasant manner. When he came near to where I was standing, smiling, bowing gracefully and talking pleasantly, he won me entirely. This was while he was being introduced to the young ladies and their mothers, who were but young women themselves. Of the young ladies introduced, two were my cousins, Lucy and Rozelle, each about fourteen years of age. In those days girls from twelve to seventeen were young ladies. Over that age they were called old maids. Old maidenhood was frowned upon. Some "Inglorious Milton guiltless of a rhyme" had expressed the prevailing sentiment of the times in this stanza:

Small families were not in vogue. A family of five or six children was considered small.

The Doctor invited the immigrants to visit him at the fort, and some of them did so. He was a valuable friend to the needy. I never saw him afterwards, hut always heard good reports of him.

The object here that fixed my attention, and that I gazed upon with admiration and astonishment, was a ship lying at anchor in the river a short distance below our camp. The hull was black and rose above the water, and the mast was like a tree. I had never before seen a water craft larger than our big boat or a Chinook Kinnim. So great was its size and beauty, I would have believed it to be one of the wonders of the world, had not some one told me it was only a schooner.