260 T. C. Elliott. Permit me, therefore, in the name of the Several Gentlemen attached to this District, and in my own name, to express the Satisfaction which we have individually experienced while serving under your command ; and to bear testimony to that urbanity and friendly feeling which have throughout char- acterised your deportment towards us during the period of your administration — a period, it may be added, distinguished no less by the substantial increase of our private comforts than by the Several public improvements which you have so successfully planned and carried through. With our united good wishes for your health during the journey which awaits you, and for your safe return, I have the honor to subscribe myself, in the name of the Several Gentle- men of Western Caledonia. Dear Sir, Your most obedient and humble servant Alex. C. Anderson, Clk. H.H.B. Co. In the Spring of 1844 Mr. Ogden crossed the Rocky Moun- tains under a year's leave of absence, his first vacation since 1822 ; rather strenuous for a Britisher. Archibald McDonald mentions sending two sons, 12 and 14 years of age, in his care to Montreal, to be placed in a good school in Vermont. During the year he attended to matters of business connected with the estate of his mother, who had died, and visited rela- tives and friends in Canada and New York, and traveled in Europe. In the Spring of 1845 we fi n d him again at Red River returning to Oregon and assigned by Gov. Simpson to take charge of the Warre-Vavasour party, then just starting for the Columbia. The Earl of Aberdeen had asked Lord Metcalf, Governor General, and Sir Richard Jackson, Com- mander in Chief, in Canada, to detail two army officers to visit the "Oregon Country" incog., as travelers, and gather information for the use of the English government in the event of war, as the negotiation over the boundary question was then at an acute stage. As to this party the story is told in the Oregon Historical Quarterly for March, 1909, and need not be repeated here. A jolly time they had of it fol-
