44 Fred Wilbur Powell, A. M.
ous one, in Germany. The former corresponded with me through Mr. Everett ; the latter through a German gentleman in the government service at Washington."*
From the point of view of results, Nathaniel J. Wyeth was the most important person who came under Kelley's influence. Of him Kelley said : "Some time in the year 1829, he came to me for the loan of my books, and documents concerning the far west, and the programme of the expedition in which he would enlist, and he enrolled his name among the names of several hundred others in the emigrants' book."*^ Wyeth, who was engaged in the ice business on Fresh Pond near Charles- town, was "surrounded with apparent advantages, and even enviable circumstances," according to the statement of his cousin ; yet "Mr. Hall J. Kelly's writings operated like a match applied to the combustible matter accumulated in the mind of the energetic Nathaniel J. Wyeth, which reflected and multi- plied the flattering glass held up to view by the ingenious and well-disposed school master. Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth had listened with peculiar delight to all the flattering accounts from the Western regions."* But while Kelley was actuated by motives of patriotism and philanthropy, the practical-minded Wyeth was moved by considerations of personal gain. Ac- cording to his own statement, he "had no view farther than trade at any time."^ To his mind the settlement of the Oregon country was a matter that could be left to follow its natural course.
From contemporary accounts we may learn something as
4 Ibid., 1 1 2-3. "Nathaniel W^eth, of Cambridge, and Captain Bonneville, of the U. S. Army, were both, I believe, enrolled in the emigration books, and were both to have command in the expedition." — ^Affidavit of Washington P. Gregg (1843) in Ibid., 116. Thornton (.Oregon and California, II, i6.) also declared that Captain Bonneville was among those enrolled. Lyman {Htst, of Oregon, III, 73) said that Bonneville's expedition was "perhaps but remotely connected wi^ Kelley's effort"; but it does not appear that Kelley made any such claim. He did claim that Thomas Shaw, supercargo on the shi|> Lagoda ot Boston, met Cap- tain John A. Sutter in San Francisco and told him of his exploration of the interior of California and of his plan to extend his colonizing activities into that region, and that it was upon Shaw's advice that Sutter settled H Sacramento. — Setttemmt of Oregon, 53, 69; Petition, 1866: 7.
5 Settlement of Oregon, 64.
6 John B. Wyeth, Oregon. 4-5.
7 Young, 90.
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