Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/161

 From Youth to Age as an American. 143 In my judgment, the men who won Oregon, by occupation, from the power of Great Britain, as represented by the Hud- son's Bay Company, had no equals as independent colonizers. It would be a pleasant task to dwell on the prominent indi- vidual traits and acts of the very many of them whom it was my good fortune to know, and in some cases to act with. But so many have left their own mark on the history of their time, and men like M. P. Deady and J. W. Nesmith, George H. Williams and R. P. Boise, H. W. Scott and W. D. Fenton have so illustrated the value of preparation, that I have little hope of adding anything worth reading. I can only agree with the estimate of my friend, ex- Governor W. P. Lord, that there never was a body of men better fitted for the work they did in winning Oregon than those who were in advance of the United States' power and laid the foundations of government in Oregon which remain yet, with additions more questionable. Nesmith and Deady did not owe so much to early training as boys as they did to self -culture in early manhood. The former, a rough carpenter at best, was a natural boss of a logging camp, and that is what he was during most of his first year in Oregon, studying at the same time how to fill the position of probate judge of Clackamas County, then bounded by the Willamette River on the west and the Rocky Mountains on the east. Mr. Deady settled in the Umpqua and labored as a blacksmith for self support at first. R. P. Boise came as a well-read lawyer, but loved the free life of the land. In regard to it as a means of living, he had what I heard Judge Williams say when instructing a jury, * ' That common sense is the best law." Judges Williams, Pratt and Strong came under appointments. H. W. Scott learned the use of the ox- whip, ax, and gun, before he began the studies from which he graduated to the ambition of founding a great paper, of which the Oregonian is the result. Of Mr. Fenton 's youth I am not informed, and that might be said of the majority of the men who came or were drawn toward the front of public affairs during the first twenty- five years of Oregon *s gov- ernmental history.