Even Doctor McLaughlin made brave display, as was his wont, in his regalia of dark blue cloth and shining buttons--his noble features and long, snow-white hair making him the most lordly figure of them all.

As for us Americans, lean and brown, with hands hardened by toil, our wardrobes scattered over a thousand miles of trail, buckskin tunics made our coats, and moccasins our boots.

I have seen some noble gentlemen so clad in my day.
We Americans were forced to listen to many toasts at that little frontier banquet entirely to our disliking.

We heard from Captain Parke that "the Columbia belonged to Great Britain as much as the Thames"; that Great Britain's guns "could blow all the Americans off the map"; that her fleet at Puget Sound waited but for the signal to "hoist the British flag over all the coast from Mexico to Russia" Yet Doctor McLaughlin, kindly and gentle as always, better advised than any one there on the intricacies of the situation now in hand, only smiled and protested and explained.
For myself, I passed only as plain settler.

No one knew my errand in the country, and I took pains, though my blood boiled, as did that of our other Americans present at that board, to keep a silent tongue in my head.