hardly persuade myself that this river had for many thousand years, poured its water continually down these falls without having facilitated the labor of man. * * * I took out my watch to see if it was not the hour for the ringing of the bells. It was two o'clock, and all was still, except the roar of the falling water. I called to recollection, that in the year 1809 I stood by the falls of Genesee river, and all was silence except the roar of the cataract. But it is not so now; for Rochester stands where I then stood."
The vision of Reverend Samuel Parker is now a reality. In the short span of eighty years we see the beautiful Willamette Valley in a high state of cultivation, towns and cities dot it here and there, while the harnessed waters drive the wheels of commerce and send the lightnings on their way to do man's bidding. Mr. Parker took his final departure on the steamship Beaver on June i8th, 1836. as she "was commencng her first voyage upon the Pacific, under the power of steam."
and the first to enter the Pacific.
The next to come were Dr. Marcus Whitman and his bride, accompanied by Reverend H. M. Spalding and his young wife; they arrived at the Fort on September 12th of the same year. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding remained at the Fort while their husbands returned to select the site of the new Whitman Mission, near Walla Walla, and to erect the necessary buildings.
[26]
