Upon the return of Mr. Matthieu, in 1858, for a visit to his home in Canada, he took the pains to visit some of Doctor McLoughlin’s relatives at their place of business in Quebec, whom he found to be men of much the same magnificent physical mould as the chief factor. He inquired of them as particularly as he dared as to Doctor McLoughlin’s fortune, venturing to remark that he supposed he was very rich. “He was wealthy at one time,” was the reply, “but his company required the payment of large sums that he advanced on credit, and that left him with little.” Mr. Matthieu understands that besides his salary of £2,500 per year, he held two shares in the stock of the company, the largest allowed to one individual outside the chartered corporation. His business also included, besides the fur trade of Oregon, extensive operations in British Columbia and Alaska, salmon export to the Sandwich Islands, and milling at Oregon City. At one time he made a proposition to build the canal and locks at the Willamette Falls, at his own expense; but was refused the charter. (F. X. M.) Returning to Mr. Matthieu’s first years in Oregon: He remained with Lucier until 1844. For two years afterwards he lived on French Prairie proper, which is some six miles back from the river. He was engaged in labor during this time, building houses, and making wagons for the settlers. Life he found carried on here in simple style, log cabins being the rule, furnished with big fireplaces, made of sticks, plastered over with the tough black clay found underneath the prairie sod. Few had stoves, and the cooking was done mainly over the coals, or in kettles swung on a crane. In 1846 he was married, and took a square mile of land a mile from the river, back of the Butte, upon which he has lived now for fifty-four years. It is a noble old place, having both prairie and woodland, and abundant water, and commands beautiful prospects in every direction. His wife was Rose, a daughter of Louis Osant, a Hudson’s Bay employee and trapper. The earliest recollections of Mrs. Matthieu are of journeyings on horseback with the parties of her father or of Michel La Framboise, one of the most trusted leaders of the Hudson’s Bay trappers. She recalls how, on one of these jaunts when she was a mere tot of three years, and she had for a comrade a little daughter of La Framboise, they were delighted as they passed under the expansive oaks of the Sacramento Valley to hear the dry leaves rustle under their horses’ hoofs. It was a Gypsy life that the trappers led, and those that made the trip to California, like La Framboise and Osant, had the pleasantest road to travel of all the parties. The mother of Rose having died, the girl was brought up in the family of Pierre Belaque, who occupied a house near Lucier’s. A patriarchal family, fourteen in number, were born to these pioneers, ten of whom are now living: