Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/227

Rh Vancouver to Eugene, and from The Dalles to Astoria." Many an immigrant without money found hospitality at The Main Street House.

He was a man of remarkable energy and even in his old age could hardly keep quiet. It may be regarded as some confirmation of his authorship of Prairie Flower that, while he attempted no more fiction, his literary habits were not wholly palsied by his money-making activities, since he wrote sketches for the newspapers on pioneer life in Oregon, and on a June day in 1878 dictated 59 pages of long-hand to Bancroft's secretary.

He was also a man of definite opinions. For instance, he was very categorical in his opinion of W. H. Gray, author of the well-known Oregon history—"Billy Gray did not suit me." Moss was still pretty certain of his own points of view when he was 88, according to an Oregonian reporter who went out to Oregon City to see him and who wrote this characterization of him: "The religious convictions of Mr. Moss were always far from orthodox. He was open, brusque of manner, vigorous rather than over-refined, and anything savoring of the hypocritical received his sternest displeasures." He saw the whole nineteenth century sweep of Oregon settlement, from 1842 to 1901, dying in the latter year in Oregon City at the age of ninety-one and a half.

Such were the main details in the life of Oregon's first novelist, who was robbed of his literary reputation and who was to see his brain-child sell into 91,000 copies under an other man's name. One friend took $63,000 back east and lost it and another took his book back east and gave it away.

One historian, Charles L. Camp, still thinks Moss did not write the book and advances the possibilities of a still different author, the Samuel Allen previously referred to. His statements are now given, preliminary to the various affirmative claims for Moss, including Moss' own:

In an early western story, The Prairie Flower, one of the characters, a trapper, guide and yarn spinner called "Black George," bears a considerable resemblance to Harris. (The Gilliam and Ford emi-