Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/363

Rh by Captain William Dall, well known to all old Portlanders. By the Columbia, Portland got a mail once a month. The Columbia was commenced in New York by a man named Hunt, who had lived in Astoria, and went east under a contract with Coffin, Chapman and Lownsdale to build the ship and run her on the Portland and San Francisco route. Hunt went east, laid the keel of the ship and got her on the ways, his money ran out, and the townsite proprietors not sending any more he sold the hull to Howland & Aspinwall, who hnished her up and sent her out to take the Portland business.

The government then in 1851 appointed a postal agent for Oregon — Na- thaniel Coe, a man of high character and religious life. Mr. Coe did much to im- prove and establish regular postal service throughout Oregon. On the expira- tion of his term of office he settled in Hood river valley near the present site of the town of Hood River, spending the evening of life in scholarly studies, plant- ing the first fruit trees in that now celebrated apple growing region, and pass- ing away at the age of eighty years, leaving highly respected sons to keep his good name.

During the first few years of the settlement of Oregon and the founding of this city the mails were carried at great expense, under great difficulties, and often at the risk of great dangers. The Indians early got to understand that the man that carried letters was in their estimation "a. big medicine man," and that all letters were "bad medicine" for them. It was not surprising that the man who undertook to carry the mail through an Indian country took his life in his hand. The photo of one of these first mail carriers (A. B. Stuart) is given on another page. Mr. Stuart was the first carrier by land, carrying dis- patches for the military department through the Indian country, going as far north and east as Fort Colville near the British line. While on one of these trips Mr. Stuart found five white men dead on the trails that had been murdered by the Indians, and he himself had to hide in out of the way places along the trails to camp and sleep in his clothes at night. Mr. Stuart was the first inspector of streets in the city of Portland and the first inspector of tobacco shops under internal revenue act of congress passed in 1864. And is still alive in fairly good health in this city.

The first carrier of the United States mails out of this city was Charles Ray of Ray's Landing on the Willamette river, who is still alive, in good health and near the four score mile post.

United States mails are now carried in and out of the city by the carload on thirty-six daily trains on transcontinental railroads, in addition to the mails daily carried in and out of the city on as many more local electric railway cars. From the mere pretense of a post office in 1850, the business of the post office of Portland, Oregon, has now grown to such proportions as to require :