gon Country-The Intervening Period of Mile Posts in the Development of Oregon. The subject assigned to me, as above, is of enough difficulty in treatment to give a strong feeling of diffidence as I approach it. Mine is the task of disclosing the epochal events in the history of our development as a state. It is in such events that the most which makes history interesting is found. As a leading object in this series of articles is to awaken interest in our history, it will be seen what a responsibility has been devolved upon me. If the really epochal events are well shown, the articles that follow will be assisted to a clear understanding. Yet if we apprehend our history correctly, we need have little worry about making it interesting. As the sculptor Powers used to say he took no pains for the expression of his statues: if they were made correctly they had the expression. The facts as they happened are interesting the moment tha they are really understood. To begin with we must not allow any conventional ideas to preoccupy our mind. It is so easy for helping the memory to divide historic times into periods of three, five, seven, one hundred, or one thousand years and this method of making history remembered has been so much employed, that it is hard to be clear of it. Conventional divisions seem impressive. We have seen persons who could not suppress a shudder when the clock struck the hour of midnight; the last year of a century seems freighted with especial importance, and it was once thoroughly believed that the world could not survive the end of the first millennium of our era. But artificial aids to memory, or stimuli to awe, are subjective and act as a blur upon the real historic page. We must search for events such as terminated a state of affairs and from which flowed a different order. Such events, once disclosed, serve as our mile posts. It will not be too much to say that epochal events terminate one mental state, of the world at large, and introduce another; as the poet and philosopher Goethe said after seeing the troops of Dumouriez chase the forces of the allied monarchs, "Gentlemen, today begins a new age.” Searching then for events in our history that affected and changed the thought of the entire intelligent world, let us proceed as rapidly as the theme will permit to name them in order. We may remember that our Oregon history is not simply local. Our quarter has affected the whole world mind, even for an appreciable number of centuries. From the days of Cortes, in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, it was the unknown; and hence the region of fable. The geographical myths that had receded before the progress of discovery were allowed here a last lurking place. Second Mexicos and Perus, Northwest passages, Anian Straits, Rivers of the Kings, adventures of ancient mariners, and regions of Brobdingnags, found in this unknown world a possible location. This probably accounts for the peculiar suggestion of distance and strangeness-a certain weird fascination -that attached until very recently to the name Oregon, and led the young poet of America to unite it with the desert name, Barca, as the emblem of remoteness from common life. That was essentially the period of myth, when the world at large possessed no accurate information, and only enough suggestions to set loose ungoverned fancies a long period, almost three hundred years, and even yet holding in its misty distance the clue to innumerable romances, that future minds-especially of the young who are preoccupied with fancies--will follow through all the labyrinths of ocean and shore. The event that ended this period was the discovery of the Columbia river by Robert Gray, of Boston. By that event myth was ended; postive knowledge took its place. What a change in the world's mental state; and with what few cool words Gray terminated the era of mental speculation!— "Anchored opposite Indian village in six fathoms water; opposite bank of river three miles distant......; nasty weather. So ends.” With that peculiar, fine, American grasp of objective fact, the mystery and difficulty that had excited and baffled Spaniard, Russian, Frenchman and Briton in turn, was solved at the first touch by this Boston sea captain! Gray sailed as easily and naturally between the breakers into the harbor of the Columbia as an American captain sails anywhere—as Dewey sailed into Manila bay. The Spaniard Heceta had reached the river, and looked in, but the night seemed coming on, and a powerful outgoing tide bore his craft far out to sea. Meares had come and looked in; but judged from a masthead observation that here was no great river. Cook sailed by both the Columbia, and the straits of Fuca, even sighting and naming Cape Flattery, but preoccupied with incorrect European accounts, left the place of real discovery and sailed far to north. Vancouver attempted an entrance, but thought it prudent to retire and to distrust Gray's information. The minds of all these great navigators were oppressed with the weight of fable; giving them either undue caution or a contempt of the region. It was the Old World sitting on their shoulders, and holding their arms. But a new order of mind, reared under free institutions, and having no dread because trusting in the powers of native mind and in Nature, accomplished the task. The discovery of the Columbia is easily the first mile post. It was a universal truth that Schiller uttered when speaking of Columbus: "Nature is ever in league with genius"-The genius of Gray, however, was only what has become characteristic of the American-love of reality, confidence in fact, and delight in the exercise of his own faculties-the freeman's soul. Gray's discovery at once turned to fable all that had been currently reported of the Northwest Pacific. Intelligence succeeded fancy. There was no northwest passage; no Anian; no river of St. Roc; no River of the Kings. There was a river Columbia. This was the first mile post; a positive fact shooting over the whole world a new and correct information. This ended the age of myth; it introduced a period of political uncertainty. It was so easy after the American led the way for the Briton to follow, and the Briton did follow so stubbornly, that it was indeterminate who was the rightful discoverer. Thus Vancouver made a careful survey of the straits and inlet that Gray entered, and his lieutenant explored the Columbia a hundred miles up. The Lewis and Clark expedition was quickly duplicated by a British explorer. The Astor fur company was followed within less than two years by the Northwest fur company from Canada. The American post at Astoria was soon changed to Ft. George. It is not my part to detail the oft repeated but still curiously interesting historical drama, during which it was not known who owned Oregon, or even who wanted it; almost every move of the Americans, whether for trade, or missions, or for settlements, being vigorously followed by a counter movement on the part of the British, and often met with so much more decisive results as to render the operations of the Americans ineffectual. That will yet furnish scenery, plots and characters for the historian and novelist, and give opportunity for the exercise of critical judgment and artistic power to the best authors. A hundred earnest, fascinating characters, selected by some characteristic social or spiritual influence, and, most remarkably, in virtually uninterrupted peace, here amid the shapes of vast mountains, wide plains and majestic rivers passed away their years; the pathetic native tribes occupying the dusk of the distance. He that can revive .that life in literature, not repeating its occurrences so much as interpreting its purposes, will be the greatest benefactor of the arriving generation, for he will show it its soul. But our purpose is to name the event that put an end to the political uncertainty. This is not so easy a matter. There are those who would place Whitman's journey to Washington as the one event that made the old condition-having then lasted almost fifty years no longer possible. Many reasons justify such choice. Almost all that has been claimed by the admirers of Whitman as his due, has been fully proved; and as a substantial, well-poised character, capable of independent and self sustained action history honors him even above any claims of partisan admiration. All doubt has been removed that he made the memorable journey with the main purpose of visiting the national capitol and convincing our government of the value of Oregon, and inducing such action as would encourage a great and overwhelming occupancy by Americans; and that in large measure he accomplished his design. But another event, occuring about the same time, had at least equal importance, and a significance above anything that any one |