was an Englishman, but their associations had been with American interests. Like Kelley, Nuttall held the degree of A. M. from Harvard. Of these men Kelley said, "There were some of my countrymen at that time at Vancouver, the recipients of the generous hospitality and favors of Mr. McLaughlin. Though for several months within five or six minutes of my sick room, yet none of them had the humanity to visit me."[1]
The first person who visited him was Young, but "his call was not so much to sympathize as to speak of the personal abuse just received from Dr. McLaughlin." To Kelley the absence of active sympathy in Young was the result of the misrepresentations of slanderous tongues, but Young may have had in mind the difference between the real Oregon and the place so glowingly pictured to him by Kelley at Pueblo and Monterey.[2] That the man was not taken at his own rating is undoubtedly true, for who could understand him, least of all those who were his adversaries? "Before I had been long in the country," he declared, "I learned that the factor and his agents were preparing in every artful way to render my abode there uncomfortable and unsafe. The most preposterous calumnies and slanders were set on foot in regard to my character, conduct and designs.[3] . . . Seeing that falsehood was making such sad work with my character, and that calumny and mockery were the order of the day, I addressed to John McLaughlin, Esq., a manifesto, prepared, of course, with a feeble hand, declaring myself not to be a public agent acting by authority from the United States, as represented at Vancouver ; but to be a private, and humble citizen of a great nation—moved by a spirit of freedom, and animated with the hope of being useful among my fellow men." Just how this communication was calculated to effect a reconciliation does not appear. That it did not soften the heart of the chief factor is certain ;
for when in the latter part of November Kelley requested a
