Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/617

 We find him also in the Frazer river mines ... in the sixties. In the winter of 1860–61 he built a boat at Assooya's Lake.... She was brought down the Okanogan and Columbia rivers to Celilo. Mr. Gray also was one of the earliest navigators of the violent Snake river. For many years he lived at Astoria, and during part of that time was government inspector of the port. He has also greatly enjoyed life in his later years on the farm of his son-in-law, Jacob Kamm, on the Klaskanine. For a number of years he was ... practicing medicine on the plains, and was ever successful.... He has reared a large family; and his sons are known up and down the Columbia.... The daughters ... have long been known in the social circles of our state. Mary Augusta Dix, ... his wife, ... became her husband's mentor, improving his defective early education, and was his inspirer and guide in the production of his history, always sustaining his interest in and revising his work.

"Mr. Gray's history of Oregon ... is a work written in the vein of a polemic, an exoneration of the party to which he belonged, ... and as a burning attack upon the opposite party.... To those who have no interest in the contests of old times, and to whom it is somewhat offensive to read of plots, charges and counter charges, the book ceases to please... In his political career, as well as in all his enterprises, W. H. Gray has ever been inflexible, blunt and direct, hard to manage, a good hater, but keen and faithful to his cause."

His book first ran as a series of historical articles in the Marine Gazette of Astoria and was published in 1870, with the full title: A History of Oregon, 1792–1849, Drawn from Personal Observation and Authentic Information.

Dr. Marcus Whitman, of Rushville, New York, sent in company with Mr. Parker to explore the country. A man of easy, don't-care habits, that could become all things to all men, and yet a sincere and earnest man, speaking his mind before he thought the second time, giving his views on all subjects without much consideration, correcting and changing them when good reasons were presented, yet, when fixed in the pursuit of an object, adhering to it with unflinching tenacity. A stranger would consider him fickle and stubborn, yet he was sincere and kind, and generous to