Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/144

 the awful panic and stampede; the solemn and silent funeral at the dead hour of night, and the lonely and hidden graves of departed friends—what memories are associated with the "plains across!"

Edward D. Baker, a friend of Lincoln, was brought up from California as a spellbinder in the Lincoln campaign of 1860. One of his many triumphs that year was his 4th of July speech at Salem: "The orator's fame had spread far and near, and when the speaker began the crowd was so vast that fully one- fourth were fortunate in finding standing room; but the eloquence of the speaker was such that in less than twenty minutes all were standing." He was killed in the Civil War in 1861. Baker County, formed the next year, was named after him, although he had been in the state just about long enough to captivate it with his eloquence and to get a senatorship from it. Following is the introduction to his first speech in the Senate in January, 1861:

Mr. President: The adventurous traveller, who wanders on the slope of the Pacific and on the very verge of civilization, stands awestruck and astonished in that great chasm formed by the torrent of the Columbia, as, rushing between Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, it breaks through the ridges of the Cascade Mountains to find the sea. Nor is this wonder lessened when he hears his slightest tones repeated and reechoed with a larger utterance in the reverberations which lose themselves at last amid the surrounding and distant hills. So I, standing on this spot, and speaking for the first time in this Chamber, reflect with astonishment that my feeblest word is reechoed, even while I speak, to the confines of the Republic....

Aaron E. Wait drove an ox-team to Oregon in 1847—a near sighted man of 34 wearing glasses. At Oregon City he edited the