Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/261



LOWNSDALE LETTER TO THURSTON 221

tinue to do so after moving into the same and shall have de- scended from a free white citizen of the United States, and otherwise be governed by the general stipulation for males."

These wordings may be a little imperfect but I thi'nk, ex- cept the definition of age and the requiring a proper surveyor to lay out such claims and report to the proper surveyor-general, where they are situated, etc., the majority of the people's case would be heard and their rights respected.

The custom house location is another matter which the people are interested in. All the objections to the matter being easily disposed of, are, the assertions of the Hudson's Bay Company and their clique who, if they cannot run the trade into the mouth of Clamet river, they will endeavor to gull the people and Congress with an assertion that Tongue Point Chanell [sic] and the mouth of the Willamette are impracticable and stop the trade anywhere but where the people need it, and although the Tongue Point bar and the mouth of the Willamette always afford as much water as the mouth of the Mississippi, they plead it is useless to be at the convenience of having trade in our vicinity but put as many trammels on it as if we were obliged to cut our own throats because they wished our death and could not otherwise kill us. It is well known that at the mouth of the Willamette (on the narrow bar of thirty yards) there is never less than 12 feet water at low tide and low water, and that the tide rises at that place to the height of four feet and yet it is impossible, as James Douglas, Ogden and Doct. McLaughlin says, to have the trade come so near the settlements as Portland.

The obstruction to any depth of water necessary to vessels of any size would be but a trifling matter to remove and in the only mo'nth that we have low water in the Willamette dur- ing the year we would be relieved from paying tribute in a useless expense where the country profited by this, is but a speck compared with the upper country, but not so bad, Johnny Bull, we will not take your advice, nor take your medicine. At any season of the year except when we have had but little rain in the fall season ; at full tide we have 17 feet of water at present and of course every inch the bar is taken off will add to the depth of water (which is a sand bar) but during the month of November we sometimes have but 16 feet, but this is even more than the highest tide gives the mouth of the Missis- sippi by one foot.

The history of no country now in existence is of more im- portance at the present to the world at large than that of Oregon