Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/216

188 This Hudson Bay Company is a terrible curse to this country. It is diametrically at war with our best interests. It is British in all its features. It is uncongenial in its structure, nature and operations with our laws and institutions. It is thoroughly hated by our people, and its falstaffian managers hate and despise everything savoring of Americanism.... We believe the time has arrived when this deadly Upas tree should be torn from our soil. It grows nothing but evil fruit, and can well be dispensed with; and we further fervently hope that the United States government may never be induced to bestow the first dime upon this miserable, bullying corporation for their imaginary possessory rights.

This makes our eighth winter in Oregon, and it comes about as near being an average one as any we recollect to have seen. The oldest settler in this country never saw two winters alike; we believe there has never been a winter known here in which the land suffered with the drouth. Rain we always expect, and rain we always get in quantities that justify us in concluding it has "set in," some time between the middle of October and the tenth of November. Some winters we have a great deal of snow, and some none.