Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/709

 university. P. S. Knight, secretary, did much in Salem to develop a taste for studies in natural history, by example, lecturing, and teaching; while Condon, whose name was synonymous with a love of geological studies and other branches of natural science, did no less for The Dalles, Portland, Forest Grove, and Eugene. These with other friends of science formed an association for the cultivation and spread of the natural science branches of education, the seat of which was Portland.

The Oregon Medical College of Portland was formed by the union of the Multnomah County Medical Society and the medical department of the Willamette University. The former society was founded about the beginning of 1865, and the latter organized in 1867. Eighty-three doctors of medicine were graduated from the university in ten years. In 1877 it was determined to remove this branch of the university to Portland, where superior advantages might be enjoyed by the students, and in February 1873 the incorporation of the Oregon Medical College took place, the incorporators being R. Glisan, Philip Harvey, W. B. Cardwell, W. H. Watkins, R. G. Rex, O. P. S. Plummer, Matthew P. Deady, and W. H. Saylor.

It cannot be said that Oregon has a literature of its own. Few states have ever claimed this distinction, and none can properly do so before the men and women born on its soil and nurtured in its institutions have begun to send forth to the world the ideas evolved from the culture and observation obtained there. That there was rather more than a usual tendency to authorship among the early settlers and visitors to this portion of the Pacific coast is true only because of the great number of unusual circumstances attending the immigration, the length of the journey, the variety of scenery, and the political situation of the country, which gave them so much to write about that almost without intention they appeared as authors, writers of newspaper letters, pamphleteers, publishers of journals, petitioners to congress, and recorders of current events. It is to their industry in this respect that I am indebted for a large portion of my material. Besides these authors, all of whom have been mentioned, there remain a few sources of information to notice.

The Oregon Spectator has preserved some of the earliest poetry of the country, often without signature. Undoubtedly some of the best was written by transient persons, English officers and others, who, to while away the tedium of a frontier life, dallied with the muses, and wrote verses alternately to Mount Hood, to Mary, or to a Columbia River salmon. Mrs M. J. Bailey, George L. Curry, J. H. P., and many noms de plume appear in the Spectator. Mount Hood was apostrophized frequently, and there appear verses addressed to the different immigrations of 1843, 1845, and 1846, all laudatory of Oregon, and encouraging to the new-comers. Lieutenant Drake of the Modeste wrote frequent effusions for the Spectator, most often addressed To Mary; and Henry N. Peers, another English officer, wrote The Adventures of a Columbia River Salmon, a production worth preserving on account of its descriptive as well as literary merit. It is found in ''Or. Spectator'', Sept. 2, 1847; Clyman's Note-Book, MS., 9-10, refers to early Oregon poets.

In point of time, the first work of fiction written in Oregon was The Prairie Flower, by S. W. Moss of Oregon City. It was sent east to be published, and appeared with some slight alterations as one of a series of western stories by Emmerson Bennett of Cincinnati. One of its foremost characters was modelled after George W. Ebberts of Tualatin plains, or the Black Squire, as he was called among mountain men. Two of the women in the story were meant to resemble the wife and mother-in-law of Medorum Crawford. ''Moss's Pictures Or. City'', MS., 18. The second novel was Captain Gray's Company, by Mrs A. S. Duniway, the incidents of which showed little imagination and a too literal observation of camp life in crossing the plains. Mrs Duniway did better work later, although her abilities lie rather with solid prose than