Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/379

Rh attested scrip whether properly negotiated or not. It was not engraved and was depreciating and so must have constituted a currency far from the ideal. Yet it is not unhallowed in the memories of the pioneers and though the volume outstanding when the territorial officials from the Government at Washington took hold of the reins of authority was never redeemed it did not furnish a new by-word for the utterly worthless.

The distribution of a barrel of silver dollars received at Vancouver, to be paid in monthly sums to the crew of the British man-of-war Modeste in the summer of 1846, was counted as an epoch in the early monetary history of Oregon. As such it only proves the exceeding scarcity of specie. Conditions as to the supply of it were to suffer a more violent change in Oregon in the closing years of the first half of the nineteenth century than they did in the world at large in the last few years of the last half. The news of the discovery of gold in California reached Oregon in the summer months of 1848. During the next few months probably two-thirds of the young and middle-aged men of Oregon went to the mines. A large proportion of these returned within a year well laden with gold dust. Those who had remained at home were doing almost if not quite as