160 F. G. YOUNG. by the people, I have no doubt, and thus pave the way for more advanced institutions." The general school law passed Sep- tember 5, 1849, during the first session of the territorial .legis- lature, provided for the election of " a superintendent of com- mon schools, ' ' who should exercise a general supervision over the interests of the common schools throughout the Terri- tory. 68 One was elected, but he had served only a year and a half when the office was abolished. 69 His claim for $679.00, which was no doubt earned, may have had something to do Avith the disposition to get along without his services. We have seen also how the liberal plans for this cause, in the two- mi]! territorial tax, the six per cent income for the fund that was guaranteed, the donations, licenses, fines, forfeitures and penalties that should accrue to the fund, the annual appor- tionments of the income how these all vanish without fulfill- ment, and even the principal of the fund itself goes into hiding in the several county treasuries. 71 The Territorial University Fund. The sources of a university fund in Oregon Avere created in the grants of land made by the donation land law 72 passed by Congress on September 27, 1850. This act contained two dis- tinct grants to aid in the establishment of a university: First, the H mount of two townships west of the Cascade Mountains, one to be located north of the Columbia River and the other 08 Oregon Statutes, First and Second Sessions, 1849, p. 68. (59 Oregon Statutes, First and Second Sessions, 1851, p. 76. 70 Appendix to House Journal, Fourth Session, 1852-3, p. 21. 71 Supra, p. 156. 7- This was an act that primarily created the office of Surveyor-General of the public lands in Oregon and provided for the first surveys. A central feature of it, also that from which it ohtained its common title, consisted of the liberal grants to settlers, who had made their long and arduous migrations in expecta- tion of these grants and had assured the Americanization of the Pacific Coast. The act organizing the Territory, passed two years earlier, had given sanction to all laws in force under the Provisional Government excepting the land laws.
