While the Company builds yet more forts up the Pacific Coast--Tako, and later Nanaimo--John McLoughlin, Jr., reigns at Stickine. Glen Rae, who came with Douglas to help establish the post, has gone on down to California in connection with that secret Hudson’s Bay diplomacy. McLoughlin was an example of reversion to ancestral type. In his veins flowed the blood of his mother’s Indian race; and in him were all the passions and few of the virtues of either his mother’s or father’s race. Morose, severe, vindictive with his men, he had neither the strength of will nor good fellowship to hold the loyalty of his staff. Outside the fort were two thousand of the fiercest Indians on the Pacific Coast. McLoughlin rightly forbade the use of liquor with these savages, but while he interdicted his men from all vices, he indulged in wildest orgies himself. In his cups, like many morose men, he became so genial that he actually plied his traders with the forbidden liquor. Excesses followed such outbursts as are better guessed than told. One night toward the end of April, 1842, McLoughlin was on one of his sprees and the fort was a roaring bedlam of drunken, yelling, fighting white men; while outside camped the Indian warriors ready for a raid. A French Canadian was for breaking rules and rushing past the sentry out to the Indian camp. McLoughlin roared out an oath forbidding him. The drunken Frenchman turned and shot his leader dead. Four days later came Sir George Simpson to find flags at half-mast and the murderer in irons. Henceforth, no more rum in Pacific Coast trade! Governor Simpson for the English, and Governor Etholine for the Russians, bound themselves to abolish the use of liquor in trade. The murderer was carried to Sitka for trial but escaped punishment, probably because McLoughlin was so much in the wrong that the dead trader’s conduct would not bear the light of investigation. This caused the first friction between Governor Simpson and Chief Factor McLoughlin. The governor blamed the doctor for placing such a worthless son in charge of any fort. What was William Glen Rae, Eloise McLoughlin’s husband, doing in California? He had been McLoughlin’s chief lieutenant before Douglas came down from New Caledonia. Swarthy, straight as a lance, somber and passionate in his loves and hates, Rae was a Scotchman of princely presence, like all the men whom McLoughlin chose for promotion. Loyal to his father-in-law to a degree, he was the very man for a delicate mission of possibly far-reaching importance.