when the governor was escorted back to his camp. The dark boats tied to the shore rocked idly on the glassy Willamette.
The bell in its frame on Father Blanchet's new chapel rang in the Sabbath. In every direction the habitants were wending their moccasined steps to the house of worship. Last night's dancers brought their numerous children packed three and four in a bunch on horseback. Graceful young half-breeds on their Cayuse ponies came loping in with a long and easy swing. Some sweethearts sat in pairs upon the sturdy little steeds. Everywhere the gayest garbs brightened the picturesque prairie.
White-headed Dr. McLoughlin, in his blue cloth cloak adorned with double rows of silver-gilt buttons, stood on the steps with a hearty hand-shake for each father and son and a cordial kiss for each wife and daughter. No wonder he stole their hearts away, this gallant governor of early Oregon! Among those weather-beaten faces were some of the first white men that ever crossed the continent; faithful Canadians, who in 1792 paddled and poled that homespun old baronet, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, from Montreal to the Fraser; men who came with Lewis and Clark; and Astor's trappers, who had drifted into the old Northwest before the war of 1812. In the fur-service they had grown gray. Now with their native wives and half-breed children they had come to a halt in the incomparable valley whose fruitful acres invited repose.
They seated themselves quietly on the rough benches, the men on one side, the women on the other, devoutly kneeling and crossing themselves as Father Blanchet went through the Catholic service. There was a rattling of beads as toil-stiffened fingers counted the
