for he might have some "come out to him after all like a lousy yearling in the spring," asked if Watt could sing. On learning that he could he bade him find a place on the bow of the boat and earn his meals as best he could. Under the title of the "figurehead," therefore, he kept his allotted place on the bow, and by his skill in singing and telling yarns earned his meals as well as his passage down the river. One song, entitled "the bobtailed mare, or the man who went to heaven horseback," made a decided hit, and Watt fared sumptuously for the remainder of the journey down the Columbia. Ever at the van across the continent Watt was the first of his party to reach his destination at Oregon City, in November of 1844. A curious spectacle he must have made as he appeared upon the streets with his walnut roundabout, buckskin pants reaching to the knees and patched with antelope skin, with a red blanket for an overcoat and woolen hat, so worn in the crown that it hung about the neck rather than rested on the head. Such was the young castle builder who had made his way across the plains with a capital of $2.50 in cash and a stock in trade of pins, fishhooks, and a pair of new boots. Such was the picturesque appearance made by one who was destined to play no unimportant part in the industrial development of Oregon. For a time he slept in the shavings of a carpenter shop. He tried to trade his last possession, his beloved rifle for decent clothes but failed. One day in his wanderings along the street he chanced to meet the chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company, the hero of his life. After a few inquiries Doctor McLoughlin gave orders to a clerk to furnish Watt with clothing. "Tut, tut, tut," said the old man, "what people these Americans are, wandering vagabonds across a continent. What are they coming here for? Give him some clothes." After a bath behind the shade of a neighboring bank of the river Watt emerged clad in his suit of British corduroy and with all his preconceived and inherited antipathy toward the British and the Catholics removed. With the first money earned from the task of bricklaying, an employment given him by Doctor McLoughlin, he sought to pay for his clothes, and purchasing a bath tub, a cake of soap and some tobacco, which was his one luxury, he had begun his career as one of the pioneer captains of industry in Oregon.