Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/143

 1858. "In this campaign," says Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor in Bancroft's History of Oregon, "E. L. Applegate, son of Lindsey and nephew of Jesse Applegate, first made known his oratorical abilities. His uncle used to say of him that he got his education by reading the stray leaves of books torn up and thrown away on the road to Oregon. He was however provided with that general knowledge which in ordinary life passes unchallenged for education, and which, spread over the surface of a campaign speech, is often as effective as greater erudition."

This proposition deeply touched the heart of the western pioneer. He had probably crossed the Blue Ridge or the Cumberland Mountains when a boy, and was now in his prime. Rugged, hardy and powerful of frame, he was full to over-flowing with the love of adventure, and animated by a brave soul that scorned the very idea of fear. All had heard of the perpetually green hills and plains of Western Oregon, and how that the warm breath of the vast Pacific tempered the air to the genial degree and drove winter far back towards the north. Many of them contrasted in the imagination the open stretch of a mile square of rich, green and grassy land, where the strawberry plant bloomed through every winter month, with their circumscribed clearings in the Missouri Bottom. Of long winter evenings neighbors visited each other, and before the big shell-bark hickory fire, the seasoned walnut fire, the dry black jack fire, or the roaring dead elm fire, they talked these things over; and, as a natural consequence, under these favorable circumstances, the spirit of emigration warmed up; and the "Oregon fever" became a household expression. Thus originated the vast cavalcade, or emigrant train, stretching its serpentine length for miles, enveloped in the vast pillars of dust, patiently wending its toilsome way across the American Continent. How familiar these scenes and experiences with the old pioneers! The vast plains; the uncountable herds of buffalo; the swift- footed antelope; the bands of mounted, painted warriors; the rugged snow-capped mountain ranges; the deep, swift and dangerous rivers; the lonesome howl of the wild wolf; the midnight yell of the assaulting savage;