Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/44

Rh"For purifying the blood, and for the cure of scrofula, mercurial diseases, Rheumatism, Cutaneous Eruptions, Stubborn Ulcers, Liver Complaint, Dyspepsia, Bronchitis, Salt Rheum, Consumption, Fever Sores, Female Complaints, Erysipelas, Loss of Appetite, Pimples, Boils, General Debility, &c."

This stuff did not even have to be marked advertising in those easy-going days of journalism.

Similar in apparent optimism was a 1-column ad in the same number for Radway's Ready Relief (R.R.R.) This preparation, it appeared,

"Instantly Stops Pain, internal and external; Prompt in Action—Speedy in Effect."

And there were others of like purport.

However raw and crude the Oregon City of 1846 must needs have been, with its one-story false-front frame business buildings, its hip-booted men in winter mud and summer dust, with rather ready firearms for settlement of differences, its sprinkling of calicoed women in their little wooden cabins, their horizon narrowed by thick primeval forests,—the first editor of the Spectator was imbued with the optimism of the pioneer. The air was bracing, forest and snow peak and rushing river gave an inspiring setting, the new soil was productive. Socially and culturally the place was not advanced, of course, and economically it was at its beginnings. But the future beckoned, rosy-fingered. And the note of the Oregon-that-is-to-be runs constant through the writings of virtually all of the editors of this early period. Thus T'Vault in his salutatory:

"Happily situated in a healthy and fertile part of the continent, with a salubrious climate, the soil yielding a rich reward to the industrious cultivator, with an abundance of water power not surpassed on the globe, to invite the attention and investment of capitalists in the establishment of machinery. Immediately on the coast of the mighty Pacific, with bays and rivers traversing our rich and fertile plains, affording the greatest facilities to commerce, and must, with the intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Saxons, in a short time, become one of the greatest commercial countries on the Pacific."

Here, despite the more than dubious syntax, we have at the very beginning of Oregon journalism a determination to be of service in bringing to the attention of the world the economic advantages of