tuous enough to please the appetite of an epicure were served. On special oc- casions, preparations, equal to those of Thanksgiving time in the colonial days, were made. The wives of the officers were usually half-caste women; hut were often good mothers and housekeepers. They, with their children, ate in a separate hall.
The village had its regattas, balls and other amusements, rendering it a place of much gaiety, especially about June, when the brigades arrived with the up- river trade, and their crews of jovial, picturesque French voyageurs.
The first school was taught here in the winter of 1832-33 by John Ball, who had come from New England with Wyeth.
Religious services were often held by visiting missionaries or by Dr. Mc- Loughlin, himself. On one of the return voyages, from Canada, two Catholic priests were brought and were furnished with property by the Hudson's Bay Company.
The first steamship to appear on the Pacific coast was the "Beaver" in 1835. It was built on the Thames for the Hudson's Bay Company. The officers of the company in England became dissatisfied with McLoughlin because of the hospi- tality he showed the settlers, and because of his having started a farm and having built a saw mill at Oregon City.
According to Rev. Dr. Atkinson in an annual address before the Pioneer and Historical Society of Oregon, held in Astoria on the 226. day of February, 1876, Dr. McLoughlin answered these charges by saying:
"When any person comes to my door, starving and naked, I will feed and clothe him. I have done my utmost duty to the company, but when you require me to sacrifice my duty to my fellow-man and to my God, I can serve you no longer."
He resigned his office and thenceforward identified himself with the Ameri- can citizens.
His resignation was accepted and James Douglas, his old friend and fellow worker, succeeded him.
After the forty-ninth parallel was agreed as the boundary line between the United States and English territory, Fort Vancouver was upon United States land, but was maintained by the H. B. Co., for a number of years while financial negotiations were being concluded, which were effected on July i, 1863. Then the Hudson's Bay Company, who had maintained headquarters here for about thirty-five years, abandoned it forever, and moved to Victoria, B. C.
Vancouver barracks, the government post now occupying this site and lying wholly within the city Hmits, is considered the most healthful and most beauti- fully located post in the United States. It was established on the site it now occupies by Major Hathaway, and Captain B. H. Hill, with permission of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose rights were still recognized on the 15th of May, 1849, as Columbia barracks. They, together with Company L and M, of the First Regiment of the United States propeller "Massachusetts" came around Cape Horn. They were the first United States troops to arrive on the North Pacific coast. Company M was left at Astoria, while Company L proceeded to Vancouver and camped temporarily in the rear of the Hudson's Bay Company's fort until their quarters were built. It was Major Hathaway's command that erected the first buildings here, which were made entirely of hewn log=.
Colonel Loring, who arrived late in the summer with a battalion of mounted riflemen, erected most of the buildings.
About the 21st of September, 1852, Lieutenant Colonel Bonneville arrived with a detachment of the Fourth Infantry, after a journey of many hardships across the Isthmus of Panama, and a trip by steamer from San Francisco. Soon after his arrival, the government took a reservation of six hundred and forty acres, whose boundaries were located by him as they now stand, and began at a cotton-wood tree near
