Gradually the town became half-military and half-savage.
Persons of importance arrived by steamers up the river, on whose expanse lay boats which might be bound for England--or for some of England's colonies.

The Government--not yet removed to Ottawa, later capital of Ontario--was then housed in the old Chateau Ramezay, built so long before for the French governor, Vaudreuil.
Here, I had reason to believe, was now established no less a personage than Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson Bay Company.

Rumor had it at the time that Lord Aberdeen of England himself was at Montreal.
That was not true, but I established without doubt that his brother really was there, as well as Lieutenant William Peel of the Navy, son of Sir Robert Peel, England's prime minister.

The latter, with his companion, Captain Parke, was one time pointed out to me proudly by my inn-keeper--two young gentlemen, clad in the ultra fashion of their country, with very wide and tall bell beavers, narrow trousers, and strange long sack-coats unknown to us in the States--of little shape or elegance, it seemed to me.
There was expectancy in the air, that was sure.

It was open secret enough in England, as well as in Montreal and in Washington, that a small army of American settlers had set out the foregoing summer for the valley of the Columbia, some said under leadership of the missionary Whitman.