Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/198

184 both in building and situation, to produce that effect. Our sleep was sweet and sound, and the waking, in the earliest morning, to gaze up at the still brilliant stars, after a night's lodging on the bare ground during all that half-famished thirty days' trip from Ft. Hall, gave me a feeling of exultation in life, which I have not command of language to describe.

On the 1 8th of October we reached Oregon City with the first fall rains. At that time the only wagon road out of Oregon City was to Tualatin Plains, where there was already some surplus grain raised, which was hauled to Oregon City for grinding. Mr. Walter Pomeroy was the largest wheat grower, and also built the first hotel at Oregon City. The Willamette River, however, was as yet the main channel of commerce through its valley.

We reached the McCarver farm on the 19th of October through a steady warm rain; and in pairing off for sleeping I joined my friend Daniel Clark again, and gave him an account of our crossing the Cascade mountains. Clark in return for my description of our trip across the mountains and our kind treatment at Oregon City, told of their trip down by » canoe, and of his taking the canoe over the rapids constituting the "long portage" by himself, and related an adventure he had had on a newly arrived ship at Vancouver, the first he remembered having seen, having been brought from Ireland to Canada in his infancy. He asked if he might look over the ship, and obtaining permission, lost no time in going on deck. He looked at the braces and rigging, scaled the ratlines as far as he felt safe, and finally found himself face to face with the captain in his cabin, busy with his manifest of cargo. The latter looked up from his work, and beholding a florid-faced, homespun-clad youth looking at him, said: "Young man, where did you come from and what do you want here?" "I did not mean to intrude, sir," answered Clark; "I never saw a ship before since I can remember—We've come from Missouri, across the Rocky Mountains; we've come to make our homes in Oregon and rule this country". The captain looked a while