by chaining to the rear of the wagon a heavy tree-top to hold back its weight.[1]
The memorial to congress concerning the important matter of a good and safe road into Oregon was not the only one rejected by the legislature in December. Gray made a motion to appoint a committee to draft a memorial to the people of the United States, giving a brief account of its soil, climate, productions, and social condition, with the difficulties and facilities of travel and settlement, and was made chairman of that committee, and in due time presented his letter to the people of the United States. It contained some unfortunate passages, and was condemned by the house to the seclusion of the archives.[2] Mr Applegate resigned after having accomplished his purpose in the legislature.[3]
Gray mentions that at the August session Applegate adopted the suggestion of Governor Abernethy, that an act should be passed to prevent litigation on account of debt, but that the bill failed, and apologizes for the ignorance of the legislature and governor in the business of law-making; but Applegate writes that he still believes laws for the collection of debts, where no fraud is alleged, are injurious, and at a future day will be abolished in all civilized communities; but that there were special reasons why they should not be enforced by provisional government, which might never be acknowledged—a side of the subject which had escaped recognition.
At the December session Gray introduced a bill on currency, which after several amendments was passed. It was suitable to the time and country, he alleges, and was made necessary by the disposition of the
- ↑ Victor, in Overland Monthly, iv. 202.
- ↑ In this memorial it is said that while in certain parts of Oregon the soil would produce 54 bushels of wheat to the acre, other parts in the interior would 'produce scarcely anything of the vegetable kind.' Or. Archives, MS., 44. Spalding, on the contrary, in his report to White, had given a very favorable, and as it is now known to be an intelligent, account of the productiveness of the soil in the nterior.
- ↑ Applegate's marginal notes on Gray's Hist. Or., 438.
