s became regular leaders of the
different brigades. There was Ross, who led the Rocky Mountain Brigade
inland across the Divide to the buffalo ranges of Montana. There was
Ogden, son of the Chief Justice in Montreal, who led the Southern Brigade
up Snake River to Salt Lake and the Nevada desert and Humboldt River and
Mt. Shasta, all of which regions except Salt Lake he was first to
discover. There was Tom McKay, son of the McKay who had crossed to the
Pacific with MacKenzie, who, dressed as a Spanish cavalier, led the
pack-horse brigades down the coast past the Rogue River Indians and the
Klamath Lakes to San Francisco, where Dr. Glen Rae had opened a fort for
the Hudson's Bay Company. {408} Then there was the New Caledonia
Brigade, two hundred strong, which set out from Fort Vancouver up the
Columbia in canoes to the scream of the bagpipes through the rocky
canyons of the river. Close to the boundary, shift was made from canoe
to pack horse, and, leaving the Columbia, the brigade struck up the
Okanogan Valley to Kamloops, bound for the bridle trail up Fraser River.
This brigade, in later days, was under Douglas, who became the knighted
governor of British Columbia. Tricked out in gay ribbons, the long file
of pack ponies, two hundred with riders, two hundred more with packs,
moved slowly along the forest trail with a drone as of bees humming in
midsummer. So well did ponies know the way that riders often fell
asleep, to be suddenly jarred awake by the horses jamming against a tree,
or running under a low branch to brush riders off, or hurdle-jumping over
windfall. Each of these brigades has its own story, and each story would
fill a book. For instance, Glen Rae at San Francisco has a difficult
mission. The company has a plan to take over the debts of Mexico to
British capitalists and exchange them for California. Glen Rae is sent
to watch matters, but he commits the blunder of furnishing arms to the
losing side of a revolution. The debt for the arms remains unpaid. Glen
Rae suicides, and the company withdraws from California.

[Illustration: JOHN MCLOUGHLIN]

{409} Presently come American settlers and missionaries over the
mountains. The American government delays settling that treaty of joint
occupancy, for the more American settlers that come, the stronger will be
the American claim to the territory. McLoughlin helps the settlers who
would have starved without his aid, and McLoughlin receives such shar