Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/14

10 So great are the distances and so wide the area of Oregon that Massachusetts could easily nestle in the Willamette Valley. Massachusetts and Rhode Island together have less area than either Harney County or Malheur County. Any one of sixteen Oregon counties is larger than the state of Delaware, and any one of twenty-four counties is larger than Rhode Island.

England, with about thirty-five million people, comprises only three-fifths as much area as Oregon, Were England as large as Oregon, she could support more than half

the present population of the United States. Yet the total population of the State of Oregon is less than one million.

The white settlers who came, when Oregon statehood was a mere Utopian dream, were strong of intellect and heroic of heart. Many of them were the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Cavaliers; and the others were like them. True to their traditions, they took up the westward journey of their ancestors, and traveled 3,000 miles, which is