Social life at Vancouver. Although business was the first consideration at V^ancouver, and Dr. McLoughlin would tolerate no idlers, yet, on the whole, life was pleasant there. The officers were nearly all well-educated gentlemen, who enjoyed good living, books, and agreeable company. Their dining hall at Vancouver was not merely a place where the tables were supplied with good food, but the scene of bright, intelligent conversation, conducted wuth perfect propriety, and pleasing to the most refined guests. The wives of the officers were usually half-caste women, yet in many cases they are said to have been excellent housekeepers and good mothers. They and their children did not eat with the men, but had tables in a separate hall. In other respects home life was much as it is in ordinary communities. The children spent most of the summer season out of doors, engaging in all manner of sports, and gaining special skill in horsemanship. In the winter a school was often maintained at the fort.^ Religious services were conducted on the Sabbath, either by McLoughlln himself or by some visiting missionary or priest. The village had its balls, regattas, and other amusements, rendering it a place of much gaiety, especially about June, when the brigades of boats arrived with the up-river traders, and their crews of jovial, picturesque French voyageurs.
Monopoly methods; relations with settlers. The
ijohn Ball, a New England man who came with Wyeth in
1832, taught the first school at Vancouver in the winter of 1832 1833. He raised a crop of wheat in the Willamette valley in the summer of 1833.
