ce
of vegetation. Beyond the storm-swept Cascades a new world appeared. The moist Chinook nurtured the trees to mammoths. Shrubbery, like the hazel, grew to be trees. The maple spread its leaves like palm fans; dogwood of magnolian beauty, wild cherry, crab-apple, interlaced with Oregon holly, black-berries, rose-bushes, vines of every sort and description, and ferns, ferns filled the canyons like the jungles of the Orinoco.
"We will all own dukedoms now," said the immigrants, picking out the fairest tracts, a square mile each of land, that might have been the pride of an English manor. Six hundred and forty acres to each family was the bill in Congress.
For seeds, wheat, implements they all applied to Dr. McLoughlin. "Yes, yes, I will loan you wheat and implements, and you can pay me when you harvest," said the doctor. "Plant all you can. Another such immigration will bring a famine."
To those without stock he loaned cattle for a term of years. To those without provisions he loaned a supply for the winter, and then loaned the boat that carried them to their destination. The commissariat was kept busy weighing out salmon, the clerks kept busy measuring out cloth. "I can't have them suffering for what we can supply," he said. "The best thing for them and for us, too, is to forward them to their destination and get them settled and self-supporting as soon as possible." About the same time Ermatinger was despatched with a cargo of goods, to open a Hudson's Bay store at the settlement by the Falls.
During that winter of 1843 a village sprang up at the Falls of the Willamette Oregon City. Out of the books brought over the plains a circulating library was formed, a lyceum was organized, a Methodist
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