To Hubert Howe Bancroft the world is indebted for details of the founding of Victoria. Bancroft obtained the facts first-hand from the manuscripts of Douglas, himself. Fifteen men led by Douglas left the Columbia in March, ’43. Proceeding up the Cowlitz, they obtained provisions from the Puget Sound Company at Nisqually and embarking on _The Beaver_, March the 13th, at ten A. M., steamed northward for Vancouver Island. At four o’clock, the next afternoon, they anchored just outside Camosun Bay. “On the morning of the 15th of March, Douglas set out from the steamer in a small boat to examine the shore.... With the expedition was a Jesuit missionary, Bolduc.... Repairing to the great house of the Indian village, the priest harangued the people ... and baptized them till arrested by sheer exhaustion. The 16th, having determined on a site, Douglas put his men at work squaring timbers and digging a well. He explained to the natives that he had come to build among them, whereat they were greatly pleased and pressed their assistance on the fort builders, who employed them at the rate of a blanket for every forty pickets they would bring.... Sunday, the 19th, Bolduc decided to celebrate mass. Douglas supplied him with men to aid in the holy work. A rustic chapel was improvised; a boat’s awning serving as canopy, branches of fir trees enclosing the sides. No cathedral bell was heard that Sabbath morning ... and yet the Songhies, Clallams, and Cowichins were there, friends and bloody enemies.... Bolduc, desirous of carrying the gospel to Whidby Island, was paddled thence on the 24th....” While his men proceeded with the building, Douglas went north on _The Beaver_ to dismantle Fort Tako and Fort McLoughlin and bring the men from these abandoned posts to assist at Camosun. “The force now numbered fifty men ... armed to the teeth ... constantly on guard.” By September, stockades, bastions and dwelling houses were complete. Douglas departed in October, leaving Charles Ross in charge, but Ross died in the spring of ’44 and Roderick Finlayson became chief trader at Camosun, first named Albert Fort after the Prince Consort, then Victoria, its present name, after the Queen of England. Finlayson had been in charge of a little post at Bytown--the modern Ottawa, but coming to Oregon had been dispatched north to Stickine. The steamer had not been long gone when the Cowichin Indians fell to the pastime of slaughtering the fort cattle. Finlayson demanded pay or the surrender of the Indian “rustlers.” The Indian chief laughed the demand to scorn. “The fort gates will be closed against you,” warned Finlayson. “And I will batter them down,” retorted the chief. [Illustration: Fort Vancouver, at the bend in Columbia River, where Chief Factor McLoughlin held sway for fifty years, and where the First American Colonists were welcomed and sheltered.]