The ruler of this vast domain was one of the noblest men in the annals of the fur trade. John M'Loughlin was a Canadian, born at Riviere du Loup, and he had studied medicine in Edinburgh. The Indians called him 'White Eagle,' from his long, snow-white hair and aquiline features. When M'Loughlin reached Oregon--by canoe two thousand miles to the Rockies, by pack-horse and canoe another seven hundred miles {118} south to the Columbia--two of the first things he saw were that Astoria, or Fort George, was too near the rum of trading schooners for the well-being of the Indians, and that it would be quite possible to raise food for his men on the spot, instead of transporting it over two watersheds and across the width of a continent. He at once moved the headquarters of the company from Astoria to a point on the north bank of the Columbia near the Willamette, where he erected Fort Vancouver. Then he sent his men overland to the Spaniards of Lower California to purchase seed-wheat and stock to begin farming in Oregon in order to provision the company's posts and brigades. It was about the time that his wheat-fields and orchards began to yield that some passing ocean traveller asked him: 'Do you think this country will ever be settled?' 'Sir,' answered M'Loughlin, emphasizing his words by thumping his gold-headed cane on the floor, 'wherever wheat grows, men will go, and colonies will grow.' Afterwards, when he had to choose between loyalty to his company and saving the lives of thousands of American settlers who had come over the mountains destitute, these words of his were quoted against him. He {119} had, according to the directors of the company, favoured settlement rather than the fur trade. [Illustration: Fort Vancouver. From a print in the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library.]