Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/91

Rh At another time we were four days, and three out of the four compelled to fight our way as we traveled, but hungry men are fond of fight and fear nothing, and so we walked through. You may think crickets and ants rather small game to shoot at, and so it is, but we have another way of taking them, which is by going in search, early in the morning, when the crickets (which are in some parts very numerous and as large as the end of your thumb,) by the coolness of the air and dew are very stupid, and climb to the top of weeds in great numbers that the sun may get a fair chance at them; they are at such times easily captured by jarring them off into a basket and then roasting them with hot stones,—feathers, guts, and all,—and make very good eating—when one gets used to it. The ants are taken by sticking a stick in the center of their hill, and making a fire around it, which compels them to ascend the stick, and from that to the basket or sack; in this way a meal is soon procured. But those times are all past with me.

I am now where we have plenty to eat and out of many dangers to which a man is exposed, and I know well how to prize it. As to how I got here I think I gave you some idea in my letter of 1844, and as I am not able to give the particulars, I will say nothing about it, but I will assure you I am here on Clatsop Plains, at the mouth of the Columbia River, within three quarters of a mile of the Pacific Ocean, in a country that when I arrived here was so thinly populated that I was able to become acquainted with every white person in the territory; but the two last years has so increased the population that two fifths are now strangers to me; 1844 gave by land an emigration of about 1,200; 1845 nearly twice that number; this year we expect them by the thousands. The people who come here are from all parts of the globe, but mostly from the western states of the U. S. A great portion are single men, roving characters, who are from every place but this, and this they can not well leave; and the prospects of our infant country are so flattering that we have no inclination to leave it; at present almost every man that arrives here, is at once filled with enterprise, and dives heels over head into something.

We have now a population of five or six thousand; there is now in operation six sawmills and five flouring mills, six stores, exclusive of the Hudson Bay Co., six blacksmith shops, and three gunsmiths, carpenter shops in any number, two tan yards, Lawyers, Doctors, and Preachers by the dozen. We have a legislature, and they have made scores of laws, the particulars of which you will get in the Oregon Spectator, a paper which is printed at Wellemette Falls, once in two weeks; the first number came out last week. I sent you one or two numbers of the first print of the Northwest Coast. I presume you would like to know something of the situation of our country, the climate, production, natural resources, &c., of which I will attempt to give you