Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/165

Rh carpenter trade he was offered the work of constructing seven hundred feet of cornice at $3 a foot, when he was on the point of offering to do it for fifty cents. The return from this employment was sufficient to give him a financial start. Not only industrious but shrewd in the matter of trade, Watt made the most of the opportunity. About this time the brig Henry came up the river at a time of high water, with a cargo of goods, among which was a stock of Seth Thomas clocks, an article for which the demand was great in this remote region. With the savings from his carpenter work Watt purchased the lot, and found little trouble in disposing of them in exchange for wheat. The harvest for the year had been abundant, while the demand was small, and the clocks, which had cost but $4 apiece, were sold for sixty to eighty bushels of wheat. Shrewdness in anticipating the oversupply of the one year would be followed by the scarcity of the next was more than rewarded. Wet weather and other climatic conditions caused a small supply while a large emigration increased the demand and the bushels of wheat were in turn exchanged for the pieces of gold. Thus in the space of two years the capital of $2.50 had increased to over $1,000, and the way was open for larger plans.

Watt had never in the meantime ceased his dreaming. It was not now, however, the broad plains of Texas and the herds of cattle, but, rather, the luxuriant meadows and hills of the Willamette Valley, which his imagination covered with flocks of sheep. Pleased with the opportunities of a country which had profited him so much, and desiring his parents and family to come, he started back to Missouri in the spring of 1847. The return was also to be made the means of realizing his dreams. It was his intention to bring back a flock of sheep. Already he seemed to see the demand that would grow up in a damp country like Oregon for woolen garments, and per-