great hall. But children playing about the court attested the presence of mothers.
"It is worthy of notice," writes an old chronicler, " how little of the Indian complexion is seen in these traders' children. Generally they have fair skin, often flaxen hair, and blue eyes."
Stealing a kiss from the cheek of his bride as she flew away after her mother, William Rae turned and watched the other gentlemen of the fort coming up the semicircular flight of steps to dinner.
Most of them are well known to-day in Oregon story. There was James Douglas, Black Douglas they called him, a lineal descendant of that Douglas who in days of old was the chief support of the Scottish throne tall, dark, commanding, and, next to McLoughlin, the ruling spirit on the Columbia. James Douglas had left the storied hills of Lanark as a boy of sixteen to seek his fortune with the fur-traders of Canada. He crossed Lake Superior and came to Fort William in the reign of McLoughlin. Fort William was then in its splendor, a great interior mart, and chief seat of the growing Northwest Company. Douglas was there when the reconciliation took place between the rival fur companies. With joy he watched the late snorting Highlanders, who had cut and carved and shot and imprisoned each other, shaking hands under the same flag and setting out for the uttermost forts in the same canoe. Fifteen years younger than Dr. McLoughlin, his attachment was that of a son or younger brother. Where McLoughlin went, Douglas went. When McLoughlin was sent to the Columbia he requested the company of his young favorite, then a lad of nineteen. Accordingly young Douglas crossed the Rockies and temporarily served at Fort St. James beyond the Fraser.
