If he had not, the chances are they would have passed their first year on the Columbia in semi-starvation; and to their shame, be it said, some forgot to pay the debts they owed McLoughlin. To them, he was the hated aristocrat, representative of the hated English monopoly, that was trying to wrest Oregon from American control. Not the reproofs of his Company, not the rage of his governor, but the ingratitude of the people whose lives he had saved at sacrifice to himself--cut McLoughlin to the quick. The very winter after Governor Simpson’s visit, a petition was drawn up by the settlers and forwarded to Congress, bristling with bitter charges against the Hudson’s Bay Company. [Illustration: _Adam Thom_ In the early days of Red River Settlement there were neither judges nor juries. The Company was autocrat supreme. When the people began to clamor for self-government, Adam Thom, a writer of Montreal, was brought up as First Recorder, and his régime became noted for his autocratic rule. Enemies, of course, said that Thom was the tool of the Company.] One more influence tended to quicken the pulse of public interest in Oregon. This was the famous and disputed Whitman Ride. Did Doctor Whitman, the missionary, save Oregon? For years popular sentiment cherished the belief that he did. Of late, historical critics have gone to the other extreme. The facts are these. It is not easy to make converts of Indians. Results are of slow growth. In the fall of 1842, the Missionary Board of the East decided to withdraw its mission on the Walla Walla. To Whitman such a move at this critical time when a straw’s weight might turn the balance either way to England or to the United States--seemed nothing short of a national calamity. “I must go East,” he told his wife. “I must see Webster at Washington, but the Mission can send me to Boston. I don’t want the Hudson’s Bay to know what I am about.” It was already October. Snow was falling on the mountains. The passes were closed for the year. “Can I get through to the East?” Whitman asked trappers and Indians. In answer, they laughed. The thing was not only impossible--it was mad. But Whitman had already accomplished things both mad and impossible. He had brought wagons across mountains, where fur traders said wagons could never come; and he had led missionaries over mountain barriers difficult as any Alps scaled by European warriors. Accompanied by Lovejoy, a lawyer, Whitman set out on October 3rd. Mrs. Whitman remained alone at the mission till the danger of a brutal Indian, trying to force his way into her room at night, induced the dauntless woman to accept Chief Trader McKinlay’s invitation to go down to the Hudson’s Bay fort at Walla Walla, where Mrs. McKinlay, Peter Ogden’s daughter, afforded companionship. On pressed Whitman over the mountains. This was the ride famous in the Western States. Its story belongs more to the pioneer than the Company. Therefore, it may not be related here. Suffice to say, Whitman