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Hall Jackson Kelley 171

cution continuing to rage, and the troops about me making daily attacks, and the hireling press again being turned against me, I was forced to abandon that enterprise. It was my in- tention to take my family to the place of settlement, and to be myself a settler, believing that should my abode be on that side of the continent, far away from persecuting enemies on this side, I could better, I supposed, promote the extension of the Redeemer's Kingdom. But I am now [1868] satisfied that it was ordered in Divine Providence, and for my good that that settlement should not be made by me ; that, although the ideal Tuget's Sound Agricultural Association' could do noth- ing, yet the Hudson Bay Company could do much to break up the establishment, and drive me and my friends from the coast ....

"To bring me into the lowest possible disrepute, and under universal contempt, and to break up that expedition, also, the following abusive notice was taken of me and my enterprise by the publishers of the Old American Comic Almanac of 1837. On one of its queer cuts was a geographical caricature of a portion of Oregon. On the banks of the Columbia was written 'Rowed up Salt Rive/ ; and in the country north, between the Cowlitz and the ocean, 'Kelley's Folly.' Twenty thousand copies were said to have been sold. To apprise my cruel enemies that I was yet alive, and had yet some power left to defend my bleeding character, I published the following in the Boston Post: . . ."»

The reader will be spared this communication, which was entitled "Unprovoked Cruelty." By his ill-advised outburst Kelley naturally brought a harmless bit of foolery to the at- tention of many who would have never known of it, and so added to his reputation as a man whose mind was singularly out of tune with his fellows. Nor did he ever fail to mention the insult when setting forth the long list of his tribulations.®

In 1837 he again took to writing on Oregon, but instead of

8 Settlemtnt of Oregon, 125-8.

o Kellev, Hist, of ui§ Colonigation of Oregon, appx. G; Narrative of Events

Difficufttes, appx. L