in opposition to him, but should, in case he withdrew, be the next claimant. He further requested leave to keep possession of some land he had cleared, and allow some persons to whom he had given lots to retain them; a proposition to which McLoughlin agreed, provided an equal amount of land should be given to him out of Waller's claim adjoining, to which Waller consented. But before the survey was completed, Waller retracted, saying, before two or three witnesses, "Do you keep yours, I will keep mine.[1] But the next day he had again altered his mind, and wished to make the exchange. When McLoughlin declined, Waller returning several times to the subject, the doctor at length paid him for clearing the land in question, and again the matter rested. In this transaction Lee, thinking the charge made by Waller extortionate, appeared in his character of superintendent, and refused to accept more than half the amount demanded, the negotiations being conducted through McLoughlin's agent, Hastings, an American lawyer, who came to Oregon in company with White, two months previously.
Waller's vacillating course could only be explained upon the hypothesis that he was endeavoring to hold the falls claim for the Mission, and the land at the Clackamas for himself, and was unwilling to trust the Mission to make good the land he had agreed to exchange with McLoughlin. Meantime the purpose of the missionaries was being developed by the formation of the Island Milling Company in 1841, three fourths of whose members belonged to the Mission and the remainder were settlers, who were allowed to take that amount of stock in order that it could be said that the enterprise was a public one, and not a missionary speculation. But had it in reality been to benefit the settlements, a site thirty or forty miles
- ↑ The witnesses were L. W. Hastings, J. M. Hudspeath, and Walter Pomeroy, immigrants of 1842. Crawford's Missionaries, MS. 20–1. Hudspeath laid off Oregon City as far as Eighth street in the autumn of 1842. Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 24.
