Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/294

284 seeing one with crumpled horns caught on the cable went out to unloose the animal. He was a jovial man, and to his wife who cautioned him to be careful, he made the laughing rejoinder, "If I was born to be drowned I won't be hanged, and if born to be hanged, I'll never be drowned.' Reaching the place where the ox was entangled he jumped from the boat, swimming towards the animal, but miscalculating the current was carried below, and was caught in a whirlpool and went down. Persons from the Mississippi Valley were very much deceived in the waters of the Columbia or Snake, which are very much lighter [clearer] than those to which they are accustomed, and also colder, and with stronger currents and more dangerous eddies. Magone himself was nearly drawn down into a whirlpool of the Snake, and only was saved by resting for a time on the edge until he recovered strength to break away.

The widow of Koontz was made a special care by Magone, who brought her chest of goods himself in a boat from The Dalles to the cascades, and with Mr. Jory carried it over the portage at the cascades, slung on a pole between the two.

The Jorys all reached Oregon in safety, and coming into the Willamette Valley looked about for a home. They were struck with the attractive little settlement at Salem, and the advantages of church and school. The choice lay between this and the yet unoccupied prairies of the Santiam, and above Albany. There the land seemed better, but the other attractions, and the fact also that in the hills near Salem the prospect of health seemed better than on the prairie, outweighed in the decision, and all took claims together about six or eight miles from the present capital. This was in the land of oak trees, and the Father Jory having seen such timber in England believed that the soil would prove fertile.