CHAPTER XIV.
SALEM AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
While we are overcoming the last twelve miles of quiet voyaging between the "Old Mission" and Salem, we may as well consider their relationship. In the autumn of 1840, the Methodist Mission built a mill on a stream twelve miles south of their first establishment, at a place called by the Indians Chemeketa, and finding the situation every way a better one than that, removed the mission to it in the following year. The first dwelling was erected at some distance back from the river, on the bank of a stream known as Mill Creek, in a very pleasant and convenient location, with an extensive plain on one hand, and a charmingly wooded, rolling landscape on the other. In 1843, the large frame-building, for many years known as "The Institute," was erected, as a school for Indian children; but the savages not taking very kindly to study, the mission was dissolved in 1844, after which time the Oregon Institute became a seminary of learning for whoever chose to patronize it, although it still remained under the control of the Methodist denomination, and was converged ultimately into a university.
Upon the sale of the mission property, the town-site of Salem was laid out by Mr. W. H. Wilson, and received its present name. It is very handsomely located upon a gravelly prairie, rising gradually back from the river, which is skirted with groves of tall
