Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/199

Rh which were put up on the site of Umpqua City. In charge of the company's business was Addison C. Gibbs, afterward governor of Oregon, who was on his way to the territory when he fell in with the projectors of the scheme, and accepted a position and shares.

Thus far all went well. But the Umpqua Company were destined to bear some of those misfortunes which usually attend like enterprises. The passage of the Oregon land law in September was the first blow, framed as it was to prevent companies or non-residents from holding lands for speculative purposes, in consequence of which no patent could issue to the company, and it could give no title to the lands it was offering for sale. They might, unrebuked, have carried on a trade begun in timber; but the loss of one vessel loaded with piles, and the ruinous detention of another, together with a fall of fifty per cent in the price of their cargoes, soon left the contractors in debt, and an assignment was the result, an event hastened by the failure of the firm in San Francisco with which the company had deposited its funds. Five months after the return of the Samuel Roberts to San FranciseoFrancisco [sic], not one of those who sailed from the river in her was in any manner connected with the Umpqua scheme. The company in California having ceased to furnish means, those left in Oregon were compelled to direct their efforts toward solving the problem of how to live.