Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/352

 FRED S. PERRINE When Alexander Henry described this spot, he was de- scribing the site of the present saw-mill in the city of Newberg, Oregon. He returned by an old Indian trail which ran along the Willamette, and which was between it and Hess Creek, to where he had left the canoe, and crossed to William Henry's house. We now have the location of this house, the second built on the Willamette, about two miles below Newberg on the opposite side of the river, in Township 3 S., Range 2 West, Section 33. We can now return to the latter part of Henry's entry of Jan. 25,1814, as follows: "This afternoon three Ameri- can freemen arrived at Mr. Wallace's house of last winter, which they had left about nine o'clock in the morning by land." This first house was up • the Willamette from Wm. Henry's house. We will assume that it took these men from six to seven hours to make the distance between the two posts, and that they made about three miles an hour, which would be good traveling in a country where there were no roads, and very few trails of any kind. Under this assumption this would place the Wallace house about twenty miles up the east bank of the Willamette, somewhere near the present city of Salem. It is fair to assume that the first post built by Wallace and Halsey was only a temporary affair, and that on the arrival of the party headed by John Reed and Alfred Seton, who left Astoria the latter part of January, 1813, the second house was built. How long the post which Alexander Henry visited, and which was in charge of William Henry, was used by the N. W. Co., is problematical. There is no record or tradition that the third house was built on the present site of Newberg.