back of the store. Like McLoughlin, Mr. Birnie had an Indian wife, brought with him from the Red River Indians of the East; but she, unlike Mrs. McLoughlin, bore herself with all the selfassertion of an English dame of long pedigree. She entertained in her own home and sat at the head of her own table, and no social center in those days in all the country was more fashionably attended than that of Mrs. Birnie. Once only in the year did she resume her Indian character, and that was for her annual trip to Shoal water Bay for elk meat, clams and cranberries.
Mrs. Birnie's canoe was one of the wonders of the lower river. No larger one in the memory of Indians had ever been seen there. It was said that it could carry seventy people. In the fall of the year this canoe, manned by twenty
