ARRIVALS BY SEA.
467
the Columbia River.[1] They were William Cushing, son of Caleb Cushing, and Henry Johnson, clerk in the establishment of Cushing and Company at Oregon City. A small fishery was established by this firm, between Astoria and Tongue Point, on the lower Columbia, from which the Chenamus took a cargo the following year, having made one or more voyages to the Islands in the mean time. The Chenamus was the only American vessel bringing a cargo to Oregon in 1844. On her return to Newburyport she took Cushing and Johnson home, and was commanded by Captain Sylvester, formerly of the Pallas, Captain Couch remaining in Oregon in charge of the company's business. Neither the vessel, her captain, nor Johnson was ever again on the Pacific coast.[2]
- ↑ Horace Holden and May Holden, his wife, came from the Hawaiian Islands in the Chenamus, Captain Couch, with Babcock and Hines, when they returned to Oregon after hearing of the appointment of a new superintendent of the Mission. Holden was a native of Hillsborough, New Hampshire, born in 1810. He took to seafaring, and while roaming about the ocean was cast away on one of the Pelew Islands, and enslaved by the natives for three years. On being rescued and returning to New England, he published an account of his adventures, called Holden's Narrative of Shipwreck and Captivity among the Savages. In 1837 he went to the Islands with the design of introducing silk culture and manufacture, but the scheme failed. He then engaged in sugar-planting on the island of Kauai, the plantation of Kalloa, in which he was interested, being the first sugar-making plantation on the Islands. By the representations of Dr Babcock he was induced to remove to Oregon, which he professes never to have liked on account of the rainy winters. Holden settled near Salem on a farm, and engaged in cattle-raising and grain and fruit growing. Holden's Oregon Pioneering, MS., from which the above is taken, contains little more than his personal experience, and while it affords a plan on which a book might be written equal to many of the most interesting narrations of adventure, contributes little that is of value to this history. See Hines' Or. Hist., 233.
- ↑ It is said that Sylvester and Johnson sailed for the Columbia River 'in a small vessel, deeply laden, which was never heard from;' but whether the Chenamus was the vessel I have no information. Her name appears no more on the shipping-list; but in her place next came the brig Henry. A glimpse here and there of the after lives of the pioneers of 1844—for all were pioneers before 1850— will give us a necessary clew to the manner of life of those who go forth to clear the way for their more favored brethren to follow, as well as the time and manner of their death. M. G. Foisy, who came to Oregon in 1844, was the first printer in the territory after Hall, who visited Lapwai from the Islands in 1841. Mr Foisy set up the book of Matthew as translated into the Nez Percé language by the Presbyterian missionaries, and printed on the little press presented to this mission by the native church of Honolulu, which press is now preserved in the state archives at Salem. He afterward went to California, where he worked at Monterey in the office of The Californian in the English and Spanish languages, merged later into the Alta California.
