ll south of Alaska--had roused the attention of the
people of the United States to the merits of Oregon, and caused them to
make extravagant claims. Long before the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which
established the 49th parallel as the boundary, M'Loughlin had foreseen
what was coming. The movement from the east had become a tide. The
immigrants who came over the Oregon Trail in 1843 were starving, almost
naked, and without a roof. Again the Indians crowded about M'Loughlin.
'Shall we kill? Shall we kill?' they asked. M'Loughlin took the rough
American overlanders into his fort, fed them, advanced them provisions
on credit, and sent them to settle on the Willamette. Some of them
showed their ingratitude later by denouncing M'Loughlin as 'an
aristocrat and a tyrant.' The settlers established a provisional
government in 1844, and joined in the rallying-cry of 'Fifty-four forty
or fight.' This, as M'Loughlin well knew, was the beginning of the
end. His friends among the colonists begged him to subscribe to the
provisional {128} government in order that they might protect his fort
from some of their number who threatened to 'burn it about his ears.'
He had appealed to the British government for protection, but no answer
had come; and at length, after a hard struggle and many misgivings, he
cast in his lot with the Americans. Two years later, in 1846, he
retired from the service of the company and went to live among the
settlers. He died at Oregon City on the Willamette in 1857.

As early as June 1842 M'Loughlin had sent Douglas prospecting in
Vancouver Island, which was north of the immediate zone of dispute, for
a site on which to erect a new post. The Indian village of Camosun,
the Cordoba of the old Spanish charts, stood on the site of the present
city of Victoria. Here was fresh water; here was a good harbour; here
was shelter from outside gales. Across the sea lay islands ever green
in a climate always mild and salubrious. Fifteen men left old Fort
Vancouver with Douglas in March 1843 in the company's ship the
_Beaver_, and anchored at Vancouver Island, just outside Camosun Bay.
With Douglas went the Jesuit missionary, Father Bolduc, who on March 19
{129} celebrated the first Mass ever said on Vancouver Island, and
afterwards baptized Indians till he was fairly exhausted. In three
days Douglas had a well dug and timbers squared. For every forty
pickets erected by the Indians he gave them a blanket. By Se