Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/363

Rh seen, that an editor in those days must have been a man of resources.

On September 7th the Spectator suspended, the printer, John Fleming, going to the mines. Publication was resumed on October 12th, with S. Bentley, printer. At this date the editor apologizes as follows:

The Spectator, after a temporary sickness, greets its patrons, and hopes to serve them faithfully, and as heretofore, regularly. That "gold fever," which has swept about three thousand of the officers, lawyers, physicians, farmers, and mechanics of Oregon, from the plains of Oregon into the mines of California, took away our printer also hence the temporary non-appearance of the Spectator.

In 1848 Judge Wait drew the deed by which Francis W. Pettygrove conveyed the Portland townsite of six hundred and forty acres to Daniel H. Lownsdale, the consideration being $5,000 in leather.

With the issue of February 22, 1849, Mr. Wait's connection with the paper ceased. During the Cayuse war, 1847–48, Mr. Wait was assistant commissary general. Prior to leaving Massachusetts he had studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Michigan in 1841. At the first election after Oregon became a state—1859—he was elected one of the judges of the supreme court, and was chief justice for four years. At the close of his official career he resumed his law practice and continued until he acquired a competency, when he retired, although still retaining an active interest in public affairs, and frequently contributing to the press. He lived to the advanced age of eighty-five, and died in 1898.

Soon after Mr. Wait's connection with the Spectator was ended, it suspended publication. On October 4, 1849, it again appeared with Rev. Wilson Blain, a clergyman of the United Presbyterian Church, as editor, and George B.