Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 21).djvu/30

24 Captains Kendrick and Gray, which vessels arrived at Nootka in September, 1788. They were roused to it by the writings of Mr. Hall J. Kelly, who had read all the books he could on the voyages and travels in Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, until he had heated his mind to a degree little short of the valorous Knight of La Mancha, that is to say, he believed all he read, and was firm in the opinion that an Englishman and an American, or either, by himself, could endure and achieve any thing [4] that any man could do with the same help, and farther, that a New-Englandman or "Yankee", could with less. Hall J. Kelley may properly be called the father of the Oregon emigration movement. Born in New Hampshire in 1790, he left home at the age of sixteen and engaged in teaching at Hallowell, Maine. In 1814 he was graduated from Middlebury College, and the following year removed to Boston, where he was occupied as teacher and philanthropist, assisting in founding the Boston Young Men's Education Society, the Penitent Female Refuge Society, and the first Sunday School in New England. He was also a surveyor and engineer, and in 1828 invested his entire patrimony in a canal project at Three Rivers (later, Palmer), Massachusetts, whither he removed in 1829. This enterprise proved a failure, and his investment a total loss. For many years he had been interested in the Oregon country, and soon after the publication of Biddle's version of the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1814), Kelley began an agitation for the American occupation of the district. He tried to interest Congress, and the first Oregon bills (1820) bear the impress of his thought—see F. F. Victor, "Hall K. Kelley," in Oregon Historical Quarterly, ii, pp. 381-400. Finding his frequent petitions of no avail, he formed a company in 1829 (incorporated in 1831) known as the "American Society for encouraging the settlement of Oregon territory." The winter of 1831-32 was spent in preparation for an emigration movement. Wyeth was a member of this organization, and at first proposed to accompany Kelley; but finding the latter's' plans impracticable, organized his own party. Kelley set out in the spring of 1832 with a small company, who all abandoned him at New Orleans. Proceeding alone to Vera Cruz, his goods were confiscated by the Mexican government; but although now penniless, he worked his way through the California. There, in the spring of 1834, he met Ewing Young (see our volume xx, p. 23, That vast region, which stretches from between the east of the Mississippi, and south of the lakes Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, was too narrow a space for the enterprise of men born and bred within a mile or two of the oldest University