By the end of August, the pioneers are in the mountains at Fort Hall, on the very borders of their Promised Land. Two-thirds of the journey lies behind them, but the worst third is to the fore, though they are now on the outskirts of what was then called Oregon. Doctor Whitman goes ahead with the trail breakers to cut a road for the wagons through the dense mountain forests. Space does not permit the details of this part of the journey. This, too, belongs to the story of the pioneer. It was November before the colonists reached the Columbia. How splendid was the reward of the long toil, they now know; but ominous clouds gathered over the colony. The Columbia was a swollen sea with the autumn rains. The Indians were rampant, stampeding the stock. “Shall we kill--is it good we kill--these Bostonais who come to take our lands?” the excited natives asked McLoughlin, the Hudson’s Bay man, at Fort Vancouver. To Pacific Coast Indians, all Americans were Boston men, so named from the first ship seen on the coast. “Shall we kill these Boston men who make bad talk against the King George men?” “Kill? Who said the word?” thundered McLoughlin, thinking, no doubt, to what lengths such a game on the part of the fur trader led in Red River; and it is said he knocked the Indian miscreant down. “The people have no boats. They are without food or clothing,” messengers reported at the Company fort. The weather had turned damp and cold. Autumn rains were slashing down slantwise. Again McLoughlin had to choose between his Company and his conscience. Had he but restrained his hand--done nothing--disease and exposure would have done more than enough to the incoming colonists; but he did not hesitate one moment, not though the colonists were cursing him for a Hudson’s Bay oppressor and the Company threatening to dismiss him for his friendship with the Americans. Instantly, he sent his traders upstream with rafts and boats and clothing and provisions for the belated people. “Pay me back when you can,” was the only bond he laid on the needy people; and a good many paid him back by cursing him for “an aristocrat.” Rain was drenching down as the boats came swirling opposite Vancouver Fort. On the wharf stood the Chief Factor, long hair, white as snow, blowing wet in the wind, with hand of welcome and cheer extended for every comer. One woman had actually given birth to a child as the rafts came down the Columbia. For days, the Company’s fort was like a fair--five hundred people at a time housed under Vancouver’s roofs or camped in the courtyard till every colonist had erected, and taken his family to, his own cabins.