Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/214

 PROFESSOR THOMAS CONDON. ern Ireland and, crossing the Atlantic, made their home in the city of New York. Here we find the future scientist an active, wide-awake boy, full of life and with a strong appetite for knowledge. Some of his leisure hours were utilized in explor- ing the Old Revolutionary fortifications near the city. And oc- casionally he spent a half holiday hunting rabbits in the wilds of what is now Central Park. A few years ago, in speaking of those days of his boyhood, he referred to his study of algebra and then said: 'But when I took up geometry it lifted me to the clouds. I drank it in as a mental food.' It seemed to be the pure, beautiful logic, the perfect chain of reasoning, that appealed to his mind. and teaching in Camillus, Skaneateles, and other places in Central New York, where he finally entered the Theological Seminary at Auburn while teaching in the evening school at Auburn States Prison. The history of those years in the lake country of Central New York would read like a romance of extreme interest. But in spite of all difficulties he spent many leisure hours among the hills and quarries gathering fossils and studying the geological formation of the region. ' ' But he had heard of the Whitman Mission in the Far West and had made up his mind to go as a home missionary to the Oregon Country, and in 1852, with his young bride, he sailed in a clipper ship around Cape Horn for San Francisco. After a long and eventful voyage they found themselves in the newly settled and unexplored Oregon. Trappers had long known it as a land of furs ; miners had known it as a land of gold ; the early pioneer had found it a country with rich and fertile soil; but its scientific resources were still undiscovered. The ques- tions that had dawned dimly upon his mind as he played by the stone quarry of his childhood, the questions that were kindled into life as he studied the fossils of Central New York, the questions of the how and wherefore of creation must have eome to him with new force as he looked out upon the fertile valleys, ^rand mountains, and noble rivers of his new home. ' ' But the activity of these first years left but little time for scientific research ; for new homes must be built, land cleared, crops planted, schools started, churches organized, and hostile Indians subdued, and there were but few of these labors of pioneer life in which he did not take an active part. "After ten years of life in Western Oregon Mr. Condon, wishing for a more needy field, moved his family to The
 * ' At about eighteen years of age, he was working, studying,