Page:Columbia - America's Great Highway.djvu/90

 Hood by moonlight. The great white pyramid seemed to touch the stars which sparkled like diamonds in the blue of the firmament, just preceding the dawn of a perfect day. The still waters mirrored the sky the stars and the mountain. It was divinely beautiful, and as he looked, his blood ran free and his heart beat as full as it did in the days of his youth, and he thanked God for permitting him to live so long in this good land.

The party descended into the wheat fields of Eastern Oregon and returned to Portland in the afternoon through the gorge of the Columbia, over the newly constructed Columbia River Highway, arriving at 7:30 p. m., covering a distance of two hundred and twenty-four miles in a traveling time of fifteen hours.

Twenty-eight hours and fifteen minutes were spent in making the round trip; halting for sleep and refreshment, and occasionally for a look at the great snow domes of Mounts Rainier, Hood, Adams, St. Helens and Jefferson, and for short visits with friends.

Fractional currency was very scarce, and how to do business and effect exchange without it was a problem. The time was fast coming when sea shells and the highly colored beads used by the Indians and the fur traders would have to give way to the coinage of metals. The first Governor of Oregon Territory, George Abernethy, had a store at Oregon City. He lacked fractional currency, and in order to meet the situation, he induced the Indians to gather flat, rectangular pieces of flint rock from the place where they made their arrow points. He glued a piece of tough paper around each stone, and wrote thereon his name, the year, and the amount which it would be good for at his store. When a customer carried a number of them he certainly had a "pocket full of rocks," and this is said to be the origin of that term.

In those early days the natural obstacles everywhere to be overcome were great, all means of transportation were crude and the burdens laid on the people by the transportation companies of that day were heavy.