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were ready to return with their sacks full of gold-dust, but how? The harbor was full of ships rotting at the wharves. As in Homer's lotus-land, every sailor that touched the golden shore straightway forgot home and friends and native land and longed ever to remain eating the golden poppy.
In February a hundred Oregonians were waiting for passage from San Francisco. Finally the captain of the old East India ship, "Janet/ 'accepted $10,000 to make a flying trip to Oregon. So the Argonauts came home, bringing the Golden Fleece, bags full, tea canisters full, pockets full of the beautiful shining dust. It was weighed like wheat or bran at $16 an ounce in trade. Men carried gold-dust in pails through the streets, women stored it away in coffee-pots and picklejars. Milk-pans full of it sat on the shelves. Homecomers on horseback threw sacks of it over the fence into the tall grass to lie over-night, or until they took a bite of supper. So great waste resulted from continual measurements that the colonial legislature concluded to mint it into dollars, and a missionary mechanic hammered the dies out of wagon tires. Thus, the Oregon colony exercised all the prerogatives of an independent power, organized government, levied taxes, coined money, raised armies, and carried on war.
Clerk Allen of Fort Vancouver was on that ship with gold from Captain Sutter in payment of his almost outlawed debts at Fort Vancouver. As he came up the Columbia the quick eye of Allen caught sight of Chief Factor James Douglas and his family and servants in a brigade of canoes just entering the Cowlitz.
A hurried colloquy ensued.
"I am removing to Fort Victoria," said Douglas. "You will find Mr. Ogden at the fort
