, but
night found him kneeling in the dewy grass under the firs.
Again Jason Lee came toiling down the Willamette. As he neared Vancouver he saw the people watching, he heard the cry, "The brigade! the brigade! "
The flag of the traders' barge, with its legend "Pro pelle cutem," "A skin for a skin," fluttered down the Columbia. Every canoe shook out its beaver-painted bannerol. The boatmen in full song rose and fell with the heavy sweep. Jason Lee paused with the rest to watch the glittering pageant. These were the golden days of Fort Vancouver, when wealth poured in on every passing tide. Nearer came the swish of waves and the measured rap of the paddles on the sides of the canoes; nearer came the slender vessels, laden, heaped, and sunk to the gunwales with their precious freights of furs.
With only less fclat, it was a repetition of the splendid panorama of the governor's return eight months before. Again the bastions roared a welcome; even the mission ship caught the enthusiasm, and waved her flags and fired her guns. The fort gates opened to receive not knights in armor clad, but the brigade of gay and happy trappers with their winter's catch of skins.
Dr. McLoughlin, with an eye to business, lingered a moment. Clerk Roberts called, "Pack in the bales, pack in the bales." The voyageurs leaped to the task and trundled up the furs.
Chief Factor Ogden, homely and kind, passed on up to the fort with Dr. McLoughlin and the other factors of his fleet. His good wife Julia and his daughter Sarah Julia followed at a distance with Archibald McKinley, a tall, red-headed Highlander, second in command at Fort St. James. All the way down the zigzag rivers of
