ght. Our broken and weakened
cavalcade asked renewal from the soil itself. We ruffled no drum,
fluttered no flag, to take possession of the land. But the canvas covers
of our wagons gave way to permanent roofs. Where we had known a hundred
camp-fires, now we lighted the fires of many hundred homes.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE DEBATED COUNTRY

The world was sad, the garden was a wild!
The man, the hermit, sighed--till woman smiled!
--_Campbell_.

Our army of peaceful occupation scattered along the more fertile parts
of the land, principally among the valleys. Of course, it should not be
forgotten that what was then called Oregon meant all of what now is
embraced in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, with part of Wyoming as well.
It extended south to the Mexican possessions of California. How far
north it was to run, it was my errand here to learn.

To all apparent purposes, I simply was one of the new settlers in
Oregon, animated by like motives, possessed of little more means, and
disposed to adjust myself to existing circumstances, much as did my
fellows. The physical conditions of life in a country abounding in wild
game and fish, and where even careless planting would yield abundant
crops, offered no very difficult task to young men accustomed to
shifting for themselves; so that I looked forward to the winter with no
dread.

I settled near the mouth of the Willamette River, near Oregon City, and
not far from where the city of Portland later was begun; and builded for
myself a little cabin of two rooms, with a connecting roof. This I
furnished, as did my neighbors their similar abodes, with a table made
of hewed puncheons, chairs sawed from blocks, a bed framed from poles,
on which lay a rude mattress of husks and straw. My window-panes were
made of oiled deer hide. Thinking that perhaps I might need to plow in
the coming season, I made me a plow like those around me, which might
have come from Mexico or Egypt--a forked limb bound with rawhide. Wood
and hide, were, indeed, our only materials. If a wagon wheel showed
signs of disintegration, we lashed it together with rawhide. When the
settlers of the last year sought to carry wheat to market on the
Willamette barges, they did so in sacks made of the hides of deer. Our
clothing was of skins and furs.

From the Eastern States I scarcely could now hear in less than a year,
for another wagon train could not start wes