He was fresh from the east, already had editorial experience, "as a well-read student had few equals," wielded a "graceful pen," later became governor of Oregon, and had a county named after him. He was George L. Curry but he was succeeded in the 25th number of the second volume by Judge Aaron E. Wait, who has been listed in another chapter among the orators. Wilson Blain, D. J. Schnebley and C. P. Culver came along like oxen to the slaughter. Then in 1855 the Oregon Spectator "winked out," a quaint term sometimes used in the old days to denote newspaper extinction—it was sold to start another paper under another name.
The contents, in which we are more interested here than in the guillotined editors, have been well summed up as follows by Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor:
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 fron tier 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 1 843, 1 845, and 1 846, all laudatory of Oregon, and encouraging to the newcomers. 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 Ad ventures of a Columbia River Salmon," a production worth preserving on account of its descriptive as well as literary merit.
The verse and prose of this chapter, all a
