before noon; you can get your goods afterward. But be sure to be in that room when the bell rings." This we understood to be an invitation to a good English dinner, which was the common usage to all business visitors. The Doctor, raising his hat, went to his office leaving the writer feeling that he had seen the best sample of the many North British noblemen he had read about in boyhood. He was a very impressive personality.
(Note 1) (The writer laboriously covered half a sheet of foolscap to his father at Pittsburg, Penn. This was on Dec. 5th, 1844; he received his father's answer via St. Louis, Mo., and across the plains to Astoria on the 15th of July, 1847. I learned on this 22nd day of March, 19 10, that the package containing my letter from my father also contained a letter from the Postmaster General, creating my general on the journey to Oregon, Cornelius Gilliam, U. S. Postal Agent for Oregon. This first mail matter sent across the plains to Oregon was carried by J. M. Shively, part owner of the site of the city of Astoria—at that time known as Fort George, a Hudson Bay Co.'s trading post with James Birnie in charge.)
I saw him again in March, 1854, m his own hospital by the bed of the guide who with Father DeSmet had divided his food supply with us at Goose Creek on Sept. 20, 1844.
(Note 2) (There were but two cots occupied in the Vancouver Hospital when I saw McLoughlin there. In addition to the guide mentioned, whose eyes were glittering with the encouragement his doctor-chief was giving as to his condition, was another, an American gentleman, dying silently, without hope. He had taken as his claim the tract which is now East Portland and erected an uncommonly good log cabin. He left a young native woman as his widow, but I have never been able to learn any more about the man than is here stated.)
The next intimate notice I had of Dr. McLoughlin was after he had moved his family to Oregon City and seemed happily busy in finishing his mills there for business. A logging crew under Judge Nesmith had thrown in a lot of logs for the
