icund
set, epicures to a degree. Mild climate, good living, and easy nerves gave them a corpulent habit in striking contrast with the lean and wiry Yankee traders that sometimes touched the coast.
There was once a complaint sent to Parliament that the Hudson's Bay Company made no attempt to cultivate the soil. Dr. McLoughlin broke that old regime. Almost from his coming there had been wheat, flour, bread, on the Columbia, yea, even gingerbread, and of late years apple pie! That fruitful orchard at Fort Vancouver had sprung from a handful of seeds dropped into the pocket of an old ship-captain by a laughing girl across the sea. "Take them and plant them in your savage land," she said. The black satin vest was packed away in a sea-chest. In airing his clothes one day at Fort Vancouver the seeds fell out. "Bless me! bless me! let us start an orchard," said Dr. McLoughlin, picking up the little triangular treasures. Another sea-captain brought a bunch of peach-stones from Crusoe's Island, Juan Fernandez. A little planting, a little care, peaches.
Back of the Fort hummed the old grist-mill, the first ever built west of the Rocky Mountains. William Cannon, the miller, an American, crossed the mountains with Astor's men in 1810. When Astor's people left he elected to remain with the British fur-traders. It was in the day of beginnings, when the post lived on salmon and wapato (the Indian potato) and were just experimenting with apple-seeds and peach-stones. The handful of seed-wheat brought from Canada was increasing marvellously when Cannon said one day, " Governor, let me build a flour-mill."
"A mill? A flour-mill? Bless you, man, where will you get burrs?"
