Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/327

 ive cents a

pack, were sold to the soldiers at Vancouver for a dollar and a half. Brown sugar that cost five cents a pound by the barrel, was sold for from forty to fifty cents a pound at The Dalles, Walla Walla, and other places outside of Portland. Cut nails that cost three cents a pound in New York, were sold for fifteen cents a pound in Portland, and everything else in proportion.

The people had passed through the worst of their straits for the necessaries of life which they suffered on reaching the country five years before the gold excitement. Even then, thanks to the wise counsel of Dr. McLoughlin, who advised them all to plant potatoes and sow wheat, they all had plenty to eat. But on the subject of clothes, everybody was on a dead level in the days of 1844, and that level was not far above the native red skins. The incoming immigration had exhausted the stock of goods in all the stores at Vancouver and Oregon City. Clothing was, like "Joseph's coat of many colors," made by putting piece to piece without regard to color or texture ; and the Indian moc- casin took the place of boots and shoes with about everybody in Oregon at that time. The veteran farmer, poet, statesman and patriot, John Minto, still living at Salem with all his faculties unimpaired, describes his experience with clothes in 1844 when he went to Vancouver to take a boat and goods up the Columbia. His pantaloons were ripped up to the knees; he had no coat, having worn out the one he started with across the plains, and a blanket obtained of McLough- lin doubled across his shoulders over a string around his neck to hold it in place, took the place of coat and with his feet nearly bare, in that plight he faithfully fulfilled his contract and earned his first money in Oregon. That's the sort of men that laid the foundations of old Oregon ; and one such man is worth a thousand of the mollycoddles turned out of colleges today to crowd the learned professions and run an automobile.

With the settlement of the title to the country, the organization of the ter- ritorial government by the United States and the influx of gold for currency, the city took on new life, and everywhere there was abundant evidence of the new order of progress and prosperity. Immigration from the states overland by wagons continued, but with so many comforts and conveniences along the way that the immigrants arrived in good shape, and with ready means to go to work. The donation land law worked wonders in attracting settlers and filling up all the open spaces in the Willamette, Umpqua and Rogue River val- leys. The prosperity and influence of these settlements was reflected in the in- creasing trade of the city. Means of transportation were scarce and expensive, but what was lacking in this regard was fully made up by the enterprise of the people. Wagon trains and pack mule trains would load up with goods in Port- land and make their way as far south as the gold mines at Jacksonville. And farmers in Douglas county would haul bacon, lard, butter, cheese and hides all the way bv wagon transportation two hundred miles to Portland, and haul back a wagon load of dry goods and groceries. In a limited way, steamboat trans- portation had been inaugurated on the Willamette and Columbia, and was being extended as rapidly as possible.

The territorial government had started off well. Lane was an energetic executive, and after vainly trying to maintain peace with the Indians, vigorously pushed measures to punish them for depredations on the Rogue River settlers, until a lasting peace was secured. But all the ambitious men saw that the ter- ritorial government was only a makeshift, and could not last long. And it was not surprising that the embryonic statesmen should be found laying their fences and planting their stakes for the big plums of United States senator- ships. United States judgeships, and so on. This very uncertainty in the tenure of the territorial officers, led to scheming for advantages and to the creation of factions all working for selfish ends rather than public welfare.

And it was during the life of the territorial government that the search for gold in Oregon commenced. Oregonians returning with gold from the Califor- nia mines, and now familiar with the native gold, soon heard the report of gold