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Hall Jackson Kelley 195

The only one of his writings in which Kelley took pride was the Memoir on Oregon prepared for Caleb Gushing in 1839. Unlike his early accounts this was based upon observation, and it is marred by comparatively few of the unfortunate manner- isms that characterized so much of what he wrote. The writers of the Bancroft histories were most favorably impressed with it, "He certainly gives in his memoir to congress in 1839, a very correct account of the topography, soil, and climate of both California and Oregon .... H€ ... . furnished information to the government that should have been of value ; and which should have been more properly appreciated, had it been presented disconnected from the recital of his personal suf- ferings and wrongs, with which all his writings after his visit to Oregon were rendered turgid .... It seems the most sober and intelligent of all his writings .... This present paper is a temperate description of the country and what the writer saw and did there. Though not without its author's constitutional wail and his usual fling at the Hudson's Bay Company, it is a well written document."^^

In this judgment Kelley would have concurred; for in de- fending himself against the criticisms of his writings on Ore- gon, he referred to the Memoir with no little satisfaction: "Nothing very extravagant is found in it; nothing but plain truths can be found in that document ; nothing but such, in all the mass of publications from my pen, which between the years 1825 and 1832, were so freely spread over the States, to enlighten about Oregon, and to induce emigration thither ; and to open that remote region to missionary enterprise."^®

Of the half dozen memorials and petitions through which Kelley sought to obtain the aid of congress during the years 1839-66, something has already been said. There was in ef- fect but a single document of this sort, which took different form as it was revised and amplified from time to time to

15 Bancroft. Northwest Coast, 11^ 556, 5^80. There is no reason to question its accuracy." — Bancroft, Hist, of California, III, 41 in. "Not very inaccurate, con- sidering Kelle/s limited opportunities of observation." — Ibid., IV, 147.

16 Settlement of Oregon, 61.