Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/29

Rh She whom he was to marry died before he reached Indiana, and on returning still unmarried, he found Short in possession of his claim; and although he was at the expense of surveying, and a house was put up by William Fellows, who left his property in the keeping of one Kellogg, Short gave Williamson so much trouble that he finally abandoned the claim and went to California to seek a fortune in the mines. The cottonwood tree which Crawford made the starting-point of his survey, and which was taken as the corner of the United States military post in 1850, was standing in 1878. The passage of the donation law brought up the question of titles to Vancouver, but as these arguments and decisions were not considered till after the territory of Washington was set off from Oregon, I will leave them to be discussed in that portion of this work. Astoria, never having been the seat of a mission, either Protestant or Catholic, and being on soil acknowledged from the first settlement as American, had little or no trouble about titles, and it was only necessary to settle with the government when a place for a military post was temporarily required.

The practice of jumping, as the act of trespassing on land claimed by another was called, became more common as the time was supposed to approach when congress would make the long-promised donation to actual settlers, and every man desired to be upon the choicest spot within his reach. It did not matter to the intruder whether the person displaced were English or American. Any slight flaw in the proceedings or neglect in the customary observances rendered the claimant liable to be crowded off his land. But when these intrusions became frequent enough to attract the attention of the right-minded, their will was made known at public meetings held in all parts of the territory, and all persons were warned against violating the rights of others. They were told that if the