Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/129

 Thomas Condon. Among the others who made studies in Oregon in the early days were Archibald Menzies, naturalist and botanist with the Vancouver expedition in 1792; David Thompson, astronomer and surveyor to the Northwest Company, who in 1811 spent a week at Astoria and the winter in the Inland Empire; James Dwight Dana, geologist, and Horatio Hale, ethnologist and philologist, with the Wilkes expedition in Oregon in 1841; and George Gibbs, geologist and a student of Chinook jargon.

All but two of these came and did their field work and left. George Gibbs, after his survey was finished, built a log cabin near Fort Steilacoom "and lived rather the life of a hermit." Dr. Thomas Condon remained permanently and hunted fossils in Oregon, during half a century, making discoveries that brought him worldwide recognition as a paleontologist.

"In his Journal of Voyage to Northwest America, from which these selections are taken, he describes his general and scientific observations during a trip made in 1824, 1825 and 1826. His name lives in the common "Saint John's wort"—Hypericum scouleri—and in a mountain harebell—Campanula scouleri."

April 15, 1825.

Today I collected a considerable number of cryptogamous plants, and none of the plants I ever met with on the N.W. coast gave me greater pleasure than Hookeria lanus." I found beautiful specimens of the charming little plant with its constant attendant, "Hypnum Splendens," growing by the margins of a shady rivulet among a brushwood composed of "Menziesia ferruginea." This pleasing occurrence