Two Years in Oregon

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 35288-h.htm or 35288-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/35288/pg35288-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35288/35288-h.zip)

Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/twoyearsinoregon00nashrich

[Illustration: Anchorage in Yaquina Bay.]

TWO YEARS IN OREGON.

by

WALLIS NASH,

Author of "Oregon, There and Back in 1877."

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, While the landscape round it measures, Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains on whose barren breast The lab'ring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied; Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.

L'Allegro.

Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel we go not up or down; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great; Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands; Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands; For man is man and master of his fate.

Tennyson.

New York: D. Appleton and Company 1, 3, and 5 Bond Street. 1882.

Copyright by D. Appleton and Company 1881.

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

TO

MY FATHER,

WHO, THOUGH SEVERED FROM US BY LAND AND OCEAN, YET LIVES WITH US IN SPIRIT.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

It is my grateful task to recognize the marked kindness with which my modest volume has been received by the public and the press. It is rare that a second edition of a work of the kind should be called for within three months of the first issue, and still more rare that, out of a vast number of reviews by the leading journals all over the country, but one newspaper, and that the one I deemed it my duty to the State of Oregon to denounce (on page 216), has found aught but words of commendation.

I desire also to tender my apologies to the esteemed Roman Catholic Archbishop, and to the Sisters of Charity of Portland, for the error on my part in ascribing to Bishop Morris, of the Episcopal Church, the credit of St. Vincent's Hospital.

I ought not to have forgotten to notice the Good Samaritan Hospital and Orphanage founded by Bishop Morris.

A single remark should be added about the price or value given, on page 70, for seed-wheat as an element of the cost of the crop raised from it.

The wheat reserved by the farmer for this purpose, being exempt from the charges and waste incident to hauling, storage, insurance, and sacking, necessary in marketing, is fairly estimated at seventy cents, though the marketed portion of the crop averages eighty-five to ninety cents; the difference being composed, in part, of profit.

W. N.

PREFACE.

I send forth this book, as sequel to the sketch published three years ago, with many misgivings--rather as if one who, as a lover, had written poems in praise of his mistress, should, as a two years' husband, give to the world his experience of the fireside charms and household excellences of his wife. Perhaps the latter might more faithfully picture her than when she was seen through the glamour of a first love.

Be that as it may, it is true that the questions put from many lands, as to how we fare in this Western country, demand fuller answers than mere letter-writing can convey. I trust that those correspondents who are yet unanswered personally will find herein the knowledge they are seeking, and will accept the assurance that they are themselves to blame for some of the more solid and tedious chapters; as, if I had not known that such information were needed, I would not have ventured to put in print again that which previous and better authors have given to the world.