Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/272

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and he had stormed in a rage, "I'll thrash that rascal. I'll "until the Madame's crooning, "There, there," fell upon his ear. "He, poor ignorant boy, he not know any better, he not understand, he tired, he too much work," until the wrath cooled out of the doctor's heart.

Lieutenant Fremont hastened down to Fort Vancouver to purchase supplies for his overland trip to California. He records in his journal: "I immediately waited upon Dr. McLoughlin, the executive officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, who received me with the courtesy and hospitality for which he has been eminently distinguished, and which makes a forcible and delightful impression on a traveller from the long wilderness from which we had issued. . . . Every hospitable attention was extended to me, and I accepted an invitation to take a room in the fort and to make myself at home while I stayed.

"I found many American immigrants at the fort; others had already crossed the river into their land of promise the Willamette valley. Others were daily arriving, and all of them had been furnished with shelter, so far as it could be afforded by the buildings connected with the establishment. Necessary clothing and provisions (the latter to be afterward returned in kind from the produce of their labor) were also furnished. This friendly assistance was of very great value to the immigrants, whose families were otherwise exposed to much suffering in the winter rains, which had now commenced, at the same time that they were in want of all the common necessaries of life."

A month after the immigration was in, Dr. Whitman came down to Fort Vancouver he felt it his duty to come in person and thank Dr. McLoughlin. The