Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/113

Rh of hide was -fastened for tugs, which I tied to the drag made from a crotch of a tree. On this I drew out logs for my cabin, which, when I had laid up and put up rafters to make the roof, I covered with bark pealed from the cedar trees. This bark covering was secured by poles crossed and tied at the ends with wood strings to the timbers below. Then out of some split plank I made a bedstead and a table, and so I dwelt in a house of "fir and cedar."

An extract from a letter dated September 15, 1833, reads:

On the Willamette, about fifty miles from Port Vancouver, in my own habitation, the walls of which are the cylindrical fir, and the roof thereof cypress and yew, greeting: After dissolving connection with N. J. Wyeth on the seventeenth of last November, I was invited by Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the fort, (a man of first rate general intelligence, and if I am not mistaken, of very liberal views,) to take charge as a pedagogue of his own son and a few other boys in the fort for the winter. All the gentlemen within the fort ate at a common table, where the fare was plain but good, and there was much instructive conversation.

Here I passed the time, not disagreeably, until March. In February Capt. N. J. Wyeth and two men started for America by the mountains. In the same month I went up the Willamette about seventy-five miles to see the country; and the first of March, having no opportunity to return home immediately, Doctor McLoughlin offered me seed, a team, and farming utensils. I came to this place and commenced farming under many disadvantages* I boarded the first three months at J. B. Desportes. a half-breed, whose family consisted of two wives, besides one absent, by all seven children, four or five slaves and two or three hired Indians, besides cats and dogs without number. All inhabited one room in common.

I made horse harness, hoe handles, plowed, made fences, sowed and planted without help, except what I could get from a wild Indian, about six weeks in the spring. I built the house aforesaid, sleeping within its walls from the day it was commenced, and soon after built a little barn. I kept for food five bushels from the twenty-five secured for sowing, but have had no corn or potatoes for want of rain.

By July 10 my companion, Mr. Sinclair, was taken with fever and ague, and is now down again. I have had two attacks this month already, and have been unable to attend at all to things scientifically from the multiplicity of other business.

I enjoy no society except Sinclair's, and even my own house has not been enjoyed without the intrusion of those I did not wish. In fact, it is a country of falsehood and low cunning. The whites adopt,