Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/54

48 In the cove, in front of the fort, was built the first vessel ever launched on Oregon waters—the little schooner Dolly, whose frame was brought out from New York in the Tonquin. She proved too small for the coasting service, for which she was intended, and, like every thing else connected with this ill-starred enterprise, a failure.

In 1813 the Astoria of the Pacific Fur Company passed into the hands of the North-west Fur Company, by whom it was re-named Fort George. Afterward it passed to the Hudson's Bay Company, and was known as Fort George, until it was abandoned by them, and came once more into American possession, when it resumed its original name. Such are the changes of sixty years. Nothing now remains to remind us of these events in history, except some slight indentations in the ground where were once the cellars of the now vanished fort, and a few graves. Perhaps the only enduring memorial is the smooth turf and fine grass of civilization, which Time does not eradicate, and which grows here in strong contrast to the rank, wild grasses of the uncultivated country.

If we turn to the modern town, we find it neatly built, and containing four or five hundred inhabitants. The chief improvement going on at present, is the new custom-house—a costly, but ill-looking structure, built of sandstone from the opposite side of the river. The present custom-house is a wooden building near the river, occupying the ground chosen by the officers and men of the United States schooner Shark, to erect their temporary shelter upon, after the wreck on the bar, in 1846. From drift-wood and cedar planks they constructed a substantial house, which, afterwards, was turned to account by others in