Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/375

Rh would become too much involved. Demands for the estate would be likely to be made at an early date. They would call for payment in specie, a sufficient sum of which was not in the country, so they were apprehensive, as they expressed it, that "a sacrifice of our property must ensue."

When a portion of the proceeds of the Young estate were utilized for securing a jail the faith of the Government was pledged for the repayment of all moneys of said estate to lawful claimants. After about ten years an heir-at-law appeared who was permitted to bring suit to recover all sums paid into the treasury from the estate with interest at six per cent. He received judgment for $4,994.64 and $44.80 for costs. Having, however, assigned his rights to a lawyer who had enemies in the Legislature the payment of the claim was suspended and made subject to the will of the Legislature. Under an act of the State Legislature providing for the adjudication and payment of all claims against the territorial government the assignee brought suit and in November, 1863, received $5,108.94 in settlement of Oregon's account with this estate.

In their primitiveness, crudeness, and simplicity conditions were arcadian in this Oregon community. No machinery to speak of, but only the absolute necessities of existence, could be transported in wagons across a two-thousand-mile stretch of desert and mountains. What money they had did not suffice to secure most meager equipment for their farms in the wilderness. Their experiences, with respect to a circulating medium and a legal tender were, therefore, much the same as those of the Atlantic Coast colonists of the middle of the seventeenth century. Principles and processes of credit were, however, brought into requisition with a