Dr. McLoughlin was the autocrat of the Oregon Country. His allegiance was to his Country and to his Company. He knew the Americans had the legal right to occupy any part of the Oregon Country, and he knew from the directors of his Company, as early as 1825, that Great Britain did not intend to claim any part of the Oregon Country south of the Columbia River. The only fort he established south of the Columbia River was on the Umpqua River. I do not wish to place Dr. McLoughlin on a pedestal, nor to represent him as more than a grand and noble man, ever true, as far as possible, to his Company's interests and to himself. To be faithless to his Company was to be a weakling and contemptible. But he was not a servant, nor was he untrue to his manhood. As Chief Factor he was "Ay, every inch a King," but he was also ay, every inch a man. He was a very human, as well as a very humane man. He had a quick and violent temper. His position as Chief Factor and his continued use of power often made him dictatorial. And yet he was polite, courteous, gentle, and kind, and a gentleman. He was an autocrat, but not an aristocrat. In 1838 Rev. Herbert Beaver, who was chaplain at Fort Vancouver, was impertinent to Dr. McLoughlin in the fort-yard. Immediately Dr. McLoughlin struck Beaver with a cane. The next day Dr. McLoughlin publicly apologized for this indignity. _Punishment of Indians._ The policy of the Company, as well as that of Dr. McLoughlin, was to keep Americans, especially traders, out of all the Oregon Country. The difference was that he believed that they should be kept out only so far as it could be done lawfully. But he did not allow them to be harmed by the Indians, and, if the Americans were so harmed, he punished the offending Indians, and he let all Indians know that he would punish for offenses against the Americans as he would for offenses against the British and the Hudson's Bay Company. Personally he treated these rival traders with hospitality. In his early years in Oregon on two occasions he caused an Indian to be hanged for murder of a white man. In 1829, when the Hudson's Bay Company's vessel, William and Ann, was wrecked on Sand Island, at the mouth of the Columbia River, and a part of her crew supposed to have been murdered and the wreck looted, he sent a well armed and manned schooner and a hundred voyageurs to punish the Indians.