flowed the Willamette between banks verdant with lowland vegetation. Beyond rose the beautiful Polk county hills, while to the south-east was the line of the Waldo heights, whose softer crests melted into the horizon. On the east a forest stretched away toward the purple shadows of the Cascade Range, overtopped here and there by a snowy peak; groves of fir and oak at intervals studded the great plain toward the north. A stream furnished mill privileges; and the whole was central to the great Valley Willamette. The late reënforcement, except the portion detailed elsewhere, as hereinbefore narrated, had been reserved for service at French Prairie, and to his new and charming Place of Rest, on his return from the east, Jason Lee immediately removed his people. Between two thousand and three thousand acres were selected, and a part put under cultivation, but owing to the scarcity of men accustomed to farm labor and to the inexperience of those present, they were obliged to leave the larger part untouched. A mill was greatly needed, and nearly the whole summer was consumed in getting milling and farming machinery on the ground.[1] And when the mill was there, the missionaries could not put it together. The stones were set running the wrong way, and when at work threw out all the wheat.[2] The sagacious superintendent had
- ↑ 'We were three or four months before we had any of the conveniences of living, though we had a fleet of five canoes plying between the Mission and Fort Vancouver, where the cargo of the Lausanne was lying. There were so many of us, and the cargoes had to be so light in the canoes, that it was a little for this family and a little for that family, and a little for the other. We did not fetch any furniture of any amount, because we brought a cabinet-maker, a chair-maker, and such like. There was not a board in the country. Everything had to be taken out of the fir-trees. Our supplies were brought in the canoes to Champoeg, and then we had to get them up by horses and wagons to the Mission, twenty miles above. Well, you start one of those men down with a team to Champoeg, and if after loading up, a whipple-tree broke, or the hold-back to the wagon, or anything of that kind, he had not the first idea of how to fix it up, and abandoned the whole thing on the prairie.' Parrish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., 10, 26. Wilkes reported finding farm machinery and other valuable property, which the society in the east had paid for, exposed to the weather and uncared for about the Mission premises.
- ↑ Parrish says further, that for a long time he used to get as good flour out of a large coffee-mill he had brought with him as could be made at the mill; and that 'half the men who came to Oregon ought to have stayed at home.
