of hardtack and bacon and a roof when it rained, the traveler who chanced to
drop in on him. To the wayfarers of the CowHtz trail he was known as "Old
Hardbread." Mighty good man he was.
- * * *
Western Oregon, fifty-four years ago, was so fully settled that the most desirable lands were most all taken. The great donation claims of 640 acres to man and wife covered all or nearly all the open valley lands. The country then was everything, the towns comparatively nothing; and Salem, as the center of agricultural Willamette, was in many ways a more important town than Port- land, as was proven by the fact that even at a later date it was able to get more votes for the state capital than Portland. Eastern Oregon was of little consequence then. In fact, the hostile Indians had driven out of the "upper country" the few whites who had tried to fix their homes there. Volunteers of Oregon and Washington were still in the field in pursuit of the hostile In- dians east of the mountains; but at Puget Sound and in southern Oregon, the contest with the Indians was practically ended. There were no white settlers yet in Idaho, which, indeed, was not made a territory until 1863. A consider- able trade had, however, grown up between Portland and the interior, by way of the Columbia river, which was first interrupted and afterward supported by the Indian war. Fifty years ago there was pretty regular steamboat movement between Portland and The Dalles, with portage connection at the Cascades. Between Portland and the Cascades the steamer Senorita, and between the Cas- cades and The Dalles, the steamer Mary, three times a week. It took two days to make the trip either way between Portland and The Dalles ; and in the Ore- gonian of October 4, 1856. W. S. Ladd gave notice that the price of freight by these boats from Portland to The Dalles was $40 a ton, ship measurement. The steamer Belle was at times one of the boats on the route. On the Willa- mette the steamer Portland ran to Oregon City, and the Enterprise from the falls to Corvallis. The Multnomah ran between Portland and Astoria, and the Jennie Clark, under Captain Ainsworth, between Portland and Oregon City. The Willamette, the boat on which this writer came from Rainier to Portland fifty years ago, had been brought around Cape Horn, but she was too expen- sive for service here, and was taken to California. Jacob Kamm and George A. Pease are the only ones of the early steamboat men who still live here. Kamm came to take charge of the engines of the Lot Whitcomb, built at Mil- waukee in 1850. She also' was taken, after a while, to San Francisco, as she was too large for the trade then on our rivers. E. W. Baughman, still on the upper Columbia and Snake rivers, began his steamboat career as a fire- man on the Whitcomb. Pease, at the age of twenty, began boating on the Willa- mette and Columbia in 1850.
Transportation is a great part of the life even of the pioneer country, and Portland owed its early growth entirely to its position in relation to navigation on one hand, and to accessibility from the pioneer settlements on the other. With the outer world communication was had chiefly by steamer from San Francisco. Fifty years ago the steamer came usually twice a month. Latest news from the east was from one month to six weeks old. But it was matter only of mighty interest that could fix the attention of a people so nearly isolated from the world and devoted of necessity to the little life around them. People here hardly cared who was elected president in 1856. By i860 somewhat closer touch had been gained with the world. Oregon then for the first time was to vote for president, and the question of that year, resulting in the election of Abraham Lincoln, quickened the attention of all. Even so late as i860, the entire population of Oregon and Washington was but 62,059, more than three- fourths of which was in Oregon.
But our pioneers, most of whom had come from the middle west, or upper Mississippi valley, and had much experience in pioneer life there, used to say
