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but ennoblement—such was the present life and the visible future of these gentlemen. The connection was so evidently and purely a business one that, as I have before stated, the native wives and children were excluded from the officers' table, and from social intercourse with visitors, living retired in apartments of their own, and keeping separate tables.^[1]

Not to be degraded by conditions so anomalous presupposes a character of more than ordinary strength and loftiness; and this, a close scrutiny of the lives of the principal officers of the company in Oregon will show. But if there was present no higher motive,

1. The families lived separate and in private entirely. Gentlemen who came trading to the fort never saw the family. 'We never saw anybody.' Harvey's Life of McLoughlin, MS., 13. The statement of Mrs Elouise McLoughlin Rae Harvey has been of great use in determining many points of the history of those early times. Ross Cox, in his gossipy book, Adventures on the Columbia River, ii. 343–4, says: "The half-breed women are excellent wives and mothers, and instances of improper conduct are rare among them. They are very expert at the needle, and make coats, trousers, vests, gowns, shirts, shoes, etc., in a manner that would astonish our English fashioners. They are kept in great subjection by their respective lords, to whom they are slavishly submissive. They are not allowed to sit at the same table, or indeed at any table "for they still continue the savage fashion of squatting on the ground at their meals, at which their fingers supply the place of forks. The proprietors generally send their sons to Canada or England for education. They have a wonderful aptitude for learning, and in a short time attain a facility in writing and speaking both French and English that is quite astonishing. Their manners are naturally and unaffectedly polite, and their conversation displays a degree of pure, easy, yet impassioned eloquence seldom heard in the most refined societies.' This is a somewhat superficial view. The quickness in the children is true enough, but the paternal name soon disappears. The daughters often marry whites, the sons seldom. Says another writer: 'Many of the officers of the company marry half-breed women. These discharge their several duties of wife and mother with fidelity, cleverness, and attention. They are in general good housewives; and are remarkably ingenious as needle-women. Many of them, besides possessing a knowledge of English, speak French correctly, and possess other accomplishments; and they sometimes attend their husbands on their distant and tedious journeys and voyages. These half-breed women are of a superior class, being the daughters of chief traders and factors, and other persons high in the company's service, by Indian women, of a superior descent or of superior personal attractions. Though they generally dress after the English fashion, according as they see it used by the English wives of the superior officers, yet they retain one peculiarity—the leggin or gaiter, which is made, now that the tanned deerskin has been superseded, of the finest and most gaudy-colored cloth, beautifully ornamented with beads.' Dunn's Oregon Territory, 147–8. This seems to be an eastern view presented second-hand by the author. Before 1842 or 1843 there was not a white wife of a Hudson's Bay officer in Oregon to be imitated. About that time George B. Roberts, who had been on a visit to England, brought to Fort Vancouver the only white woman ever at home within its walls. She died in 1850 at the Cowlitz farm.