CHAPTER XIII.
OREGON CITY.
That portion of the Wallamet between Portland and Oregon City, a distance of twelve miles, is very charming, in a quiet, picturesque style. On the east side the country is level, the banks being moderately high, and well wooded. On the west side the mountains keep along, at a little distance back from the river, for some miles. We pass by a skirting of bottom-land, with a belt of oak-trees on a slight ridge, and soon come abreast of Oak Island, a longish, narrow island—covered with a growth of fine, large oak-trees—on which is a house or two. The island, we believe, is used as a milk-ranch, the alluvial nature of the soil making it a good piece of pasture-ground.
A romantic bit of history is told in connection with this island. In the early times of American occupancy in Oregon—that is, about 1841—a half-dozen young men who had strayed to this remote corner of the world, where they found nobody except fur-traders and missionaries, became dissatisfied with a country where there were no white women whom they could marry; and being determined not to take Indian wives, as too many others were willing to do, resorted to this island, and together built a small schooner, with the purpose of getting to California. The only place in the country where they could procure sails, cordage, and rigging generally, was at the Hudson's Bay Com-
