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entered a mountain pocket where never foot of white man trod before, and trapped my fifteen beaver in a night. Along the Missouri, twenty years ago, a good hunter could trap a hundred in a month. Many an industrious Flathead laid up six hundred in a season. It 's a great business, a great business," continued Ogden, lighting up with his old pride. "The loss of Oregon is a paltry matter all the North is ours. Our boats will carry British manufactures to the remotest wilds, and bring back furs, furs, furs. Wherever the smoke of a wigwam curls you will find our gay ribbons, and beads and bells and scarlet cloth."
Peter Skeen Ogden sat with hand clutched in his grizzly locks, while Bonneville, hero of Irving's tale, the very Bonneville driven back in 1834, came in, and right under his nose laid off a United States military reserve on the old Hudson's Bay ground.
At last the day came to give up the keys. The trapping clans gathered for their last banquet. Dugald McTavish came down from Victoria, and Donald Manson who had built the fort in 1824. Birnie came up from Cathlamet, McKinley from his farm in the Willamette, and Gagnier, who one time ruled the Umpqua. The old hall rang to the last bout and wassail. General Harney was guest where on the morrow he would be master. All night the puncheon floor sprang to the steps of dancers. When the fiddle-strings snapped and the candles flared, McTavish opened the window. The red sun rolled up like a wheel of fire beside Mt. Hood, gilding the dawn of United States possession of Fort Vancouver. By order from Washington, General Harney demolished the old fort, and to-day the prettiest military post in the United States covers the grassy greensward on the north ba
