Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/34

26 "The Indians state that ship of the white men was driven ashore here and wrecked. The crew, however, survived, and reaching- land lived for some time with the natives. A large part of the vessel's cargo was beeswax. But in the course of several months the white men became obnoxious to the Indians because of violating their marital relations. The whites were consequently killed, but fought to defend themselves with slungshot. As Mr. Smith notes, this would indicate that they had lost their arms and ammunition.""

This account, it is to be observed, agrees essentially with the details given by Henry.

References to the wax other than those just given are rather infrequent until recent times. Belcher, an early navigator, obtained some specimens in 1837. It is said that six tons of wax from the mouth of the Columbia were received at a Hawaiian port about 1847. Professor George Davidson, of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, while at Cape Disappointment in 1851, obtained a specimen which had been picked up on Clatsop beach. Later, in the Coast Pilot for California, Oregon and Washington Territory, 1869, Professor Davidson describes the wax deposit and evidences of the wreck from which it supposedly came. Others to refer to the subject are C. W. Brooks, in a paper before the California Academy of Science, 1875, and H. M. Davis, in a communication to the American Antiquarian Society, April, 1892.

During this whole period of eighty years extending from 1813 to 1893 no one seems to have questioned that the deposit of wax was due to any other cause than the thing traditionally accepted as its origin— a wrecked vessel. The only difference of opinion apparent in the matter was regarding the nationality of the vessel, some investigators having it of Spanish ownership, others of Chinese or Japanese. In 1893, however, a new aspect was introduced by two circumstances. The first was an opinion rendered regarding the nature of the wax by the commissioner in charge of the Austrian exhibit at the Columbian Exposition. A part of this exhibit consisted of ozokerite, a wax of mineral origin which is