3
Shall I leave these Americans to starve, or drive them from the country? Gentlemen, if such be your orders, I can serve you no longer."
And so, on account of assisting the immigrants, Dr. McLoughlin resigned his position at the head of the Hudson's Bay Company west of the Rocky Mountains, and thereby sacrificed a personal income of $12,000 per annum.
As sad-faced Eloise sailed home into the Columbia she saw a great concourse at Fort Vancouver. A beautiful young lady, escorted by British officers, was christening a new sloop for the infant Prince of Wales.
"Can that be little Cecelia?" said Eloise. "How quickly she has grown! How quickly I have aged! "
In widow's weeds, with an infant in her arms, the Lady of the Pacific Coast had returned to Fort Vancouver, to find her father dethroned and Douglas reigning in his stead.
Dr. McLoughlin brought to Oregon City the same spirit of enterprise that had made Fort Vancouver the metropolis of the fur-forts. He gave employment to immigrants, built the best house, built saw and grist mills, and his loud voice might be heard in the streets directing his Indian servants as they grubbed up the stumps. Many yet living remember the white-headed man in swallow-tailed coat and brass buttons waving his cane like a truncheon at the head of the Falls " A canal can be cut from this basin to the gulch beyond the bluff, and this whole canyon can smoke with factories."
A certain element, however, could never forget that Dr. McLoughlin had been at the head of a foreign monopoly, and pointed the finger with the whispered, " Aristocrat! Aristocrat! "
