Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/255

204. Furthermore, he declared his intention to hold the property as a private claim when the boundary should be finally determined. The ground claimed was "from the upper end of the falls across to the Clackamas River, and down where the Clackamas falls into the Willamette, including the whole point of land, and the small island in the falls on which the portage was made."

The correspondence appears to have been begun in July 1840, soon after Waller had been sent to establish a mission at the falls, in which he was generously assisted by McLoughlin, who gave him permission to erect a house out of some timbers that had been previously squared by himself for a mill. After giving the notice mentioned, McLoughlin concluded his letter with these words: "This is not to prevent your building the store, as my object is merely to establish my claim. "

A satisfactory reply was returned, and Waller proceeded in the erection of a building, divided into two apartments, one of which served as a dwelling and the other as a store-room for the goods of the Mission. And yet Hines tells us that Waller was left without an appointment by Lee in 1840, in order that he might assist "in the erection of mills on the Wallamette River."

For some reason no mill was begun at the falls at this time; but in 1841 Felix Hathaway, in the employment of the Mission, began to build a house on the island, at which McLoughlin again took alarm and remonstrated with Waller in person. At this interview Waller, without directly denying the intention of the Mission to hold the site at the falls, quieted the apprehensions of McLoughlin by stating that he had taken a claim on the Clackamas River below McLoughlin's claim. At the same time Hathaway desisted from his building operations on the island,