Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/363

 COMMUNICATION IN EARLY OREGON 355 that the commander of the squadron made any effort to extend aid to the colonists in their distress. The Oregon and American Evangelical Unionist, the third newspaper published in Oregon, was published at Tualatin Plains, the first number appearing June 7, 1848. Under the heading "Mails," it said, "Probably the greatest embarrassment to the successful operation of the presses in Oregon is the want of mails." It had made arrangement with Mr. Knox to carry the paper on the east side of the Willamette and with Mr. Stoughton on the west side from Oregon City through Tuala- tin, Yamhill and into the upper part of the valley, once in two weeks. Mr. Knox started out with 16 subscribers. It had also made arrangements to receive mails regularly from Portland once each week and oftener by express whenever foreign in- telligence appeared in the river. "June 31st The Hudson's Bay Company's bark Cowlitz from the Sandwich Islands crossed the Columbia bar the 14th and arrived at Vancouver the 20th, and at once began loading wheat for Sitka. She brought news of the death in Washing- ton February 23d of the venerable John Ouincy Adams," just five months before. July 5, the arrival of the Evelyn with Sandwich Island notes to June 3 is noted at length. It copied from the Polynesian of Honolulu, and the Sandwich Island paper had in turn copied from London papers as late as February 26. These papers came by way of Mazatlan on the west coast of Mexico. No regular communication existed between Mazatlan and Aca- pulco in Mexico and San Francisco, or the Columbia River, but a line of schooners plied between the west coast of Mexico and the Sandwich Islands while the Hudson's Bay Company had frequent communication between these islands and Van- couver. Newspapers and letters were carried by water to Eastern ports on the Gulf of Mexico, thence overland to the west coast and in this way information regarding occurrences in the Atlantic States four months previous and in Europe still a month earlier was brought to Oregon and published as news.