English officers like John Dunn, and Americans who would have liked to share the ownership of the water-power with him, all lead me to the conviction that he chose it as the home of his age. I think myself safe in saying that here the Doctor saw the happiest days of his wonderful, useful and in every way noble life in Oregon. The eagerness and interest with which he went from point to point of the works he had under construction were evidences of this. There was no word of difference of shorage right between him and the milling company in 1845. While on this subject let me say that the ownership of a copy of Blackstone's Commentary on English Law by J. W. Nesmith, at this time chief workman on the flumes and king of Canemah's bachelor hall, satisfies me that McLoughlin's mind was at rest in regard to his riparian rights. I regret that I failed to make the personal acquaintance of Judge Nesmith at this time. He loaned the copy of Blackstone to J. S. Smith and I had perhaps a half-hour's lesson in it of great value to me subsequently.
The Americans then in Oregon were generally generous as well as just to McLoughlin. The missionaries were mostly wild about land matters, expecting townships to be given to the respective sects, where a rational view could see no service done. The writer succeeded the M. E. Mission as owner of the original chosen site, and on Sundays often spent the hour of the sermon leaning against the fence inclosing the fifteen or twenty graves within pistol shot of the original building. The lettering cut over Anna Pittman Lee and her babe was always sermon enough for me, an unregenerate:—"Behold, we have left all and followed thee. What shall we have therefore?" I never could and cannot yet condone the action of Mr. Lee in being away from his home when his wife and babe died.
From the summer of 1828 to that of 1845 we have the record that with Donald Manson, his construction officer, who built Fort Vancouver, Dr. McLoughlin made examination of the Willamette valley as a possible wheat field; they had three
