XXXV
DEATH OF JASON LEE
1845
TWELVE miles below Oregon City, in a little swale in the muffled, silent forest, a rival town was laid. A missionary hauled timber to build a church. A wandering printer set up a newspaper that he called the "Oregonian."
"The head of ship navigation, the outlet of a fertile valley, must become a metropolis," said the far-seeing Pettygrove, a Yankee merchant who had brought a cargo around the Horn from Portland, Maine. "And what shall we call our metropolis?" said Pettygrove to Lovejoy, the lawyer, as they laid out lots in the timber.
"Call it Boston," answered Lovejoy, the Bostonian.
"No, Portland," said the man from Maine, and the two wandering Yankees tossed up a penny for "heads or tails," and "Portland "won.
"Hah, Doctor, Hi did not suppose Hi should be hable to find you hout hof bed," cried Ermatinger, gayly landing at Fort Vancouver a few days later.
"Why so?" inquired the doctor.
"'Aven't you 'eard? Dumbarton of Big Pigeon 'as made the speech hof the epoch, ha great big-tree talk, ha real Hamerican stumper, you know."
"What was the subject?"
