Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/370

 the schooner, the J. M. Ryerson—and sailed to explore the Gulf of California, and the more northern shores of the Pacific, where his penetrating judgment was attracted to the spacious bay 8 miles south of Cape Blanco in 1850 in December, and this was his first arrival in the Territory of Oregon.

Then in command of the steamer Sea Gull on its regular voyages between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, on June 9, 1851, he landed here and became a resident, and soon obtained a title to its site with the heroic defenders, as told in the tragic story of the siege of Battle Rock.

From that day on he became tireless in its advocacy, and was twice elected to the Territorial Legislature, and later to the State Senate from the counties of Coos, Curry and Umpqua in 1860. In that year we beheld the remarkable coincidence of his former old Illinois Colonel E. D. Baker, being the republican candidate for U. S. Senator from the State of Oregon. Although the Captain had been elected as a Douglas Democrat, he cast his vote for his old friend Baker, and also for his partizan friend, Col. James W. Nesmith, both of whom were elected as Oregon's Senators,that year.

As a last tribute of remembrance, the names of some of the old pioneers should not be omitted, whom I now recall, and knew here sixty-five years ago. In a vision I summon to view their once familiar faces and grasp them by the hand.

Their strong lives early impressed us and made our own better by their remembrance. Each one was a character noticeable for some special trait, different from the other, but all with courage of convictions, resource-