to have the salary of the postmaster at that place raised to one thousand dollars.
This was a formidable amount of work for a single delegate, but Lane was equal to the undertaking. And here I will briefly review the congressional labors of Thurston's successor, who had won a lasting place in the esteem and confidence of his constituency by using his influence in favor of so amending the organic law as to permit the people to elect their own governor and judges, and when the measure failed, by sustaining the action of the legislature in the location of the seat of government.
Lane was always en rapport with the democracy of the territory; and while possessing less mind, less intellectual force and ability, and proceeding with less foresight than Thurston, he made a better impression in congress with his more superficial accomplishments, by his frankness, activity, and a certain gallantry and bonhomie natural to him.[1] His first work in congress was in procuring the amendment to Thurston's bill to settle the Cayuse war accounts, which authorized the payment of the amount already found due by the commissioners appointed by the legislature of 1850–1, amounting to $73,000.[2]
Among the charges brought against Governor Games was that of re-auditing and changing the values of the certificates of the commissioners ap-
- ↑ There is a flattering biography of Lane, published in Washington in 1852, with the design of forwarding his political aspirations with the national democratic convention which met in Baltimore in June of that year.
- ↑ U. S. H. Jour., 1059, 1224, 32d cong. 1st sess.; U. S. Laws, in Cong. Globe, 1851–52, pt iii. ix.; U. S. H. Jour., 387, 22d cong. 1st sess.; Or. Statesman, July 10, 1852.
others. In 1858 the Emily Packard was wrecked at Shoalwater Bay. When Gov. Curry in 1855–6 addressed a communication to the secretary of the U. S. treasury, reminding him that an appropriation had been made for light-houses and fog-signals at the Umpqua and Columbia rivers, but that none of these aids to commerce had been received, Guthrie replied that there was no immediate need of them at the Umpqua or at Shoalwater Bay, as not more than one vessel in a month visited either place! Perhaps there would have been more vessels had there been more light-houses. In Dec. 1856 the light-house at Cape Disappointment was completed, and in 1857 those at Cape Flattery, New Dungeness, and Umpqua; but the latter was undermined by the sea, being set upon the sands.
