Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/207

Rh received from him a present of a flag, an ensign, a compass, kedge-anchor, hawser, log line, and two log glasses, the captain flung the flag to the Oregon breeze and turned the prow of the Star of Oregon toward the River's mouth. She may be remembered as the first sea-going vessel built of Oregon timber. Crossing the Bar in a storm, she sped southward in a spanking breeze, all hands seasick except Gale. He held the wheel thirty-six hours continuously, and in five days "dashed through the portals of the Golden Gate like an arrow, September 17, 1842."

As it was too late to get the cattle back to Oregon that fall, the party sold their schooner for three hundred and fifty cows, wintered in California, and the next spring drove to the Columbia twelve hundred and fifty head of cattle, six hundred head of mules and horses, and three thousand sheep. This was an achievement which made the way for immigration clearer than ever before, and in a most effective manner united the American settlers with the American government. Some of the Hudson's Bay Company people could begin to see the handwriting on the wall. Dr. McLoughlin saw most quickly and most clearly, and as elsewhere narrated, began to transfer his interests to the American side. This fine old man was big-brained, big-bodied, and big-souled, a natural American, though compelled to work for the British fur monopolists for the time. He admired the independent spirit of the incoming Yankee immigrants, even when the joke was on him. He afterwards told with much gusto of an American named Woods crossing the Columbia to Vancouver to try to get goods. He found his credit shaky, and somewhat piqued, he