the Pacific, found time to turn around and form a state. The sterling merit of the Oregon pioneers of the '405 may be measured from the fact that the Oregonian who went to California on the discovery of gold in 1848-49 included a number of men, like Peter Burnett, who obtained honorable distinction in the history of California. The gold fever swept a vast immigration of all sorts to California within a few months, but as a whole it was far inferior in mental and moral quality to the men who laid the foundations of our great state.
Immigration steadily increased and the settlements gradually grew, so that all the woods and all the valleys became peopled. Only the bravest dared to undertake the long journey across the plains, and only the wisest and the strongest survived; hence Oregon was early peopled with the strongest, the wisest and the bravest of the new race. And while there may have been no Moses, no Caesar, no Cromwell among them, there was a large sprinkling of such men as Joe Meek, Gray the historian, United States Senator Nesmith, Governor Abernethy, General Joseph Lane, Doctor Laughlin, and Applegate, the sage of Yoncolla men with warm hearts, teeming brains, skillful hands, and sinewy arms. And the women were the daughters of the women who came in the Mayflower, and they were like unto them. They spun and wove, and in any home you might have seen a Priscilla with her wheel and distaff as of old.
