Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/69

 Recollections of B. F. Bonney 53 winter while father worked on the mill. The winter of 1846 was one of the coldest that the oldest settlers of Oregon could remember. Hundreds of head of wild cat- tle and Indian horses died as they couldn't get at the dried grass beneath the snow. "In the fall of 1847 we moved to our donation land claim two miles east of where the town of Hubbard now stands. "Among my pleasant memories of our stay in Oregon City was playing with a playmate, a son of Col. W. G. T'Vault, the first editor of the Oregon Spectator at Ore- gon City, the first paper to be published west of the Rocky Mountains. One day young T'Vault and I were walking along the streets of Oregon City when we met Dr. McLoughlin and Mr. Barlow. Barlow had a plane bit in his hands. Dr. McLoughlin put his hand on my head and said: 'Don't you boys want to earn some candy? If you will go with Mr. Barlow and turn the grind stone while he sharpens that plane bit, I will give you each a handful of candy.' As soon as Mr. Barlow had pronounced the bit sharp enough we hurried back to Dr. McLoughlin and he gave us each a handful of plain candy hearts with mottoes on them. That was the first store candy we had ever eaten, or for that matter had ever had in our hands. "Another recollection of Oregon City is going with my cousin, Wisewell Bonney, and young T'Vault to the building which was used as a mint. The men there would melt the gold dust on a blacksmith's forge, pour it into molds, roll it through a roller and keep rolling it till the bars were thin, when they would stamp $5 and $10 gold pieces out of the gold bars. They had a beaver on one side and were called Beaver money. They manufactured about $30,000 worth of $10 coins and $25,000 worth of $5 coins. By accident they made them too heavy, so they were worth more than five or ten dollars, so when the people got them they would melt them up or send