Came also in October, 1845, two special commissioners from the Hudson’s Bay Company to report on Oregon. The report was sent back without McLoughlin’s inspection. They had reported against him for favoring the American settlers. Knowing well this was the beginning of the end, McLoughlin sent for Douglas to come down and take charge. The mail of the following spring dismissed McLoughlin from the service. That is not the way it was put. It was suggested he should retire. McLoughlin gave up the reins in 1846 and withdrew from Vancouver Fort to live among the settlers he had befriended at Oregon City on the Willamette. He died there in 1857. It is unnecessary to express an opinion on his character. The record of his rule in Oregon is the truest verdict on his character. His was one of the rare spirits in this world that not only followed right, but followed right when there was no reward; that not only did right, but did right when it meant positive loss to himself and the stabs of malignity from ungrateful people whom he had benefited. The most of people can act saintly when a Heaven of prizes is dangling just in front of the Trail, but fewer people can follow the narrow way when it leads to loss and pain and ignominy. McLoughlin could, and that Christ-like quality in his character places him second to none among the heroes of American history. As Selkirk’s name is indissolubly connected with the hero-days of Red River, so McLoughlin’s is enshrined in the heroic past of Oregon. In Hudson’s Bay House, London, I looked in vain for portraits or marble busts of these men. Portraits there are of bewigged and beruffled princes and dukes who ruled over estates that would barely make a back-door patch to Red River or Oregon; but not a sign to commemorate the fame of the two men who founded empires in America, greater in area than Great Britain and France and Germany and Spain combined. * * * * *