Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/204



192 F. G. YOUNG

Young made a short trip to the Gila and Colorado. What he had netted through these last three trips the otter hunt, the long trip to Klamath lake and the short one to the southeast we do not know. At any rate Hall J. Kelley was to find him quite susceptible to the story of Oregon. Kelley had arrived at San Diego enroute for Oregon, having come across the Isthmus of Tehauntepec from Vera Cruz and up the west coast of Mexico. Young and Kelley met at Pueblo near San Diego. Kelley speaks of Young as "a native of Tennessee, a man remarkable for sagacity, enterprise, and courage." 32 After listening to Kelley 's preaching Oregon we can picture him taking account of his prospects in California and his compari- son of them with what Oregon seemed to promise, if Kelley's story was to be credited. He had tried out about all possible trapping and trading enterprises, having traversed the length and breadth of the almost continental domain of California. \Yithal he had but meagre returns. He must too have become conscious of the fact that his powers could be better applied than in the roving life of the trader and trapper. For him to remain as a settler in California as it then was would be the doom of a foreigner buried in a foreign land. Its traditions, language and polity could never be congenial to a nature so intensely imbued with Americanism as was his. There was no possibility of a following for the "stirring, ambitious" Amer- ican among the languid natives of Spanish antecedents. On the other hand the Oregon country with its Columbia and abounding resources open and ready for American occupation must have answered quite fully to the vision of the goal he had always had in view. From this weighing of pros and cons he soon changed from the "almost persuaded" of the first meeting with Kelley to altogether persuaded and, hastening north, sought out Kelley who had proceeded as far as Monte- rey. "The last of June he arrived," says Kelley, "at my en- campment on the prairie, five miles eastward of Monterey, and

32 Powell's Hall Jackson Kelley, p. 80.