Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/316

306, this stringency was but a small impediment to their spirit of enterprise and did not at all mar their happiness.

Mr. Warren's business was chiefly rafting logs to Astoria, and this required that he should often be absent from home, and Mrs. Warren remembers the courage that it required, or must be assumed, to remain alone at such times and care for the home. She tells of one day when she was thus alone that the entire place was surrounded by Indians who had become intoxicated, and although usually they were tractable when sober, she did not know what they might attempt while thus exhilarated, but she sang around the house, doing her work and attending to the baby with the greatest show of unconcern; and perhaps this cool manner saved trouble.

Neither was it all pleasure on the river where Mr. Warren navigated the rafts. In the daytime and during serene weather there was no difficulty, but logs had to go at other times also. He tells of one night off Tongue Point, an elevated headland that projects sharply a mile or more into the broad river, and where both wind and stream are violent in heavy weather, that the raft of logs which he and one other man were attempting to handle became windbound, and all but went to pieces. The seas broke constantly over the end of the clumsy structure, and to make it worse, the gale, having risen suddenly from the east, was piercingly cold, freezing the spray as it fell. At another time he lost a raft in the breakers near the mouth of the Columbia, and narrowly escaped with his life.

After seven years on the farm and rafting on the river, a mercantile and market business was undertaken at Astoria. It is worthy of mention that in connection with the market business the firm, Warren & McGuire,