Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/30

12 existing law would not prevent trespass the legislature should make one that would prove effectual. Thus warned, the envious and the grasping were generally restrained, and claim-jumping never assumed alarming proportions in Oregon. Considering the changes made every year in the population of the country, public sentiment had much weight with the people, and self-government attained a position of dignity.

Although no claimant could sell the land he held, he could abandon possession and sell the improvements, and the transaction vested in the purchaser all the rights of the former occupant. In this manner the land changed occupants as freely as if the title had been in the original possessor, and no serious inconvenience was experienced for the want of it.

Few laws were enacted at the session of 1847, as it was believed unnecessary in view of the expected near approach of government by the United States. But the advancing settlement of the country demanding that the county boundaries should be fixed, and new ones created, the legislature of 1847 established the counties of Linn and Benton, one extending east to the Rocky Mountains, the other west to the Pacific Ocean, and both south to the latitude 42°.

The construction of a number of roads was also authorized, the longer ones being from Portland to Mary River, and from Multnomah City to the same place, and across the Cascade Mountains by the way of the Santiam River to intercept the old emigrant road in the valley of the Malheur, or east of there, from which it will be seen that there was still a conviction in some minds that a pass existed which would lead travellers into the heart of the valley. That no such pass was discovered in 1848, or until long after annual caravans of wagons and cattle from the States ceased