It would be interesting from a colonial point of view to know just what qualifications the British Government thought Commander Gordon of the Pacific Squadron and his officers, Lieut. William Peel, son of Sir Robert Peel, and Lieutenant Parke of the Royal Marines, possessed to judge whether Oregon was worth keeping or not. It would be interesting from a purely Canadian point of view. American historians, who ought to be profoundly grateful to Gordon for his blunders, pronounce him the most consummate bungler ever sent on an International mission. Reference has been made in an introductory chapter as to how these naval officers dealt with the matter and the grave injustice they did the Hudson’s Bay Company. Parke and Peel came down to the Columbia and passed some weeks on hunting expeditions up the Walla Walla and the Willamette. They surveyed Fort Vancouver and laughed. All the international pother about that wooden clutter! They observed the colonists and laughed! Why, five hundred marines from any one of their fifteen war ships lying in Puget Sound could send these barefooted, buckskin-clad, tobacco-spitting settlers skipping back over the mountains to the United States like deer before the hunt in English parks! To the two naval officers, these people were but low-living peasants. It did not enter into the narrow vision of their insular minds that out of just such material as these rough pioneers do new nations grow. The two gentlemen regarded the whole expedition as a holiday lark. _They had a good time!_ Up on Puget Sound Gordon was serving the British Government still more worthily. He had landed at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s new post of Victoria--of which more anon. He was given the best that the fur post could offer--table of wild fowl and the Company’s best wines, but Half-breed servants do not wait on a table like an English butler; and berth bunks are not English feather beds; and an ocean full of water is not an English bath. Alas and alas, poor gentleman! Such sacrifices is he called to make for his country’s service! Then my gentleman demands what sport. “Deer,” says Finlayson, “or bear hunting; or fishing.”