January 29th: "This is my birthday, but I have forgotten how old I am." Mr. Wyeth was on this day thirty-three years old. February 3d: "At this camp there is a hot spring, too hot to bear the hand in, and smoking like a coal - pit, 134°; took a good bath by going down stream until I found a suitable temperature." By February 10, 1835, Mr. Wyeth was again on the Columbia, en route, "in a very leaky canoe, which kept us bailing all the time," for Fort Vancouver, where he arrived two days later. This tour of exploration occupied nearly three months, in the dead of winter, and in the more elevated and coldest part of Oregon. I cannot, in the limits of a magazine article, give the details as I have them in the daily record of his wanderings. Enough is given to show that this man possessed untiring energy, guided by superior intelligence and tact. He realized that in order to induce immigration the country must be fully explored and described, and this was his great aim in life, to succeed in the colonization of Oregon.

By February 27th he was again on the Wallamet, and established a post at Wappatoo Island, near the mouth of this river. He immediately put his force to work, getting out a cargo of hooppoles and lumber for the Sandwich Islands, and making a large canoe to "lighter" over the shallows into deep water near the mouth of the Wallamette. "The whole tree was two hundred and forty-two feet long, and this by no means the largest tree on Wappatoo Island." This island is near Portland. This " canoe was sixty feet long, deep enough to chamber twenty-five barrels, clear of knots, shakes, and almost of sap."

The diary of Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth ends with this date. If any further record of his labors was kept it is lost. From a study of his character I think it is more than likely that the journal was continued, for he not only was industrious and exact in keeping his diary up to this period, but even kept copies of his correspondence, which copies, covering this interesting chapter of his career, are now in my possession. From these letters I gather that he established a settlement, which he hoped would be permanent, on Wappatoo Island, about four miles from

the mouth of the Wallamette.

From Fort William, in the winter of 1834, the brig Ida, loaded lumber,

coopers' material, etc., had sailed for the Sandwich Islands, returning on April 3, 1835. He had, in addition to building Fort Hall on Lewis River (now in Idaho), built Fort William on the Columbia, about forty miles above its mouth, opened a large farm fifty miles up the Wallamette, and made an establishment on Wappatoo Island. About this time he was prostrated by an illness, brought ou by overwork and reckless exposure, which long threatened to terminate his career. In the mean time his men became discouraged and demoralized in the absence of their leader, upon whom their hopes rested. The Indians, fearing that they were about to be supplanted by the settlement of their lands by enterprising whites, took advantage of the demoralization; and, as Barrows, in his History of Oregon, suggests, it is probable that the Hudson Bay Company, seeing in Mr. Wyeth's persistent energy and pluck a formidable competitor for the trade and possession of this country, were silent abettors of the persecution and ultimate destruction of this expedition. Governor Pelly, of this company, writes in 1838, "We have compelled the American adventurers to withdraw from the contest."

This was doubtless their policy, for they avowedly built Fort Boisé, near Fort Hall, for the purpose of killing off the trade and influence this establishment rapidly acquired. Mr. Wyeth, however, always acknowledged the personal courtesies and kindnesses he received from the officers of this company, and did this publicly in one of the Boston newspapers after his return. After a terrible struggle, well deserving a better fate, and more than this, deserving a recognition of his services for Oregon, which his countrymen in that section of the country have not yet accorded him, broken in health and bankrupt in purse, and deserted by those of his followers who survived, he gave up the fight.

Here is his last letter written from Oregon:

"COLUMBIA RIVER, Sept. 22d, 1835 "DEAR WIFE,—I have been very sick, but have got well, and shall be on my way to the mountains, to winter at Fort Hall, in about six days. I expect to be home about the first of November, 1836. Mr. Nuttall is here, and well. I have sent you a half-barrel of salmon, which I hope will be in good order. I cannot attend to putting them up myself, therefore

stood was still known as Barrow's corner, to the regret of the druggist who had opened a shop there. Ten years before, the murder of Deputy-Sheriff Welsh had led him to the penitentiary, and a month previous to the opening of the new courthouse he had been freed, and arrested at the prison gate to stand trial for the murder of Hubert Thompson. The fight with Thompson had been a fair fight-so those said who remembered it-and Thompson was a man they could well spare; but the case against Barrow had been prepared during his incarceration by the new and youthful District Attorney, "Judge" Henry Harvey, and as it offered a fitting sacrifice for the dedication of the new temple of justice, the people were satisfied and grateful.

The court-room was as bare of ornament as the cell from which the prisoner had just been taken. There was an imitation walnut clock at the back of the Judge's hair-cloth sofa, his revolving chair, and his high desk. This was the only ornament. Below was the green table of the District Attorney, upon which rested his papers and law-books and his high hat. To one side sat the jury, ranch-owners and prominent citizens, proud of having to serve on this the first day; and on the other the prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the citizens of Zepata in close rows, crowded together on unpainted benches; back of them more citizens standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around all the whitewashed walls. Colonel John Stogart, of Dallas, the prisoner's attorney, procured obviously at great expense, no one knew by whom, and Barrow's wife, a thin yellowfaced woman in a mean-fitting showy gown, sat among the local celebrities at the District Attorney's elbow. She was the only woman in the room.

Colonel Stogart's speech had been good. The citizens were glad it had been so good; it had kept up the general tone of excellence, and it was well that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present on this occasion, and that he should have made what the citizens of Zepata were proud to believe was one of the efforts of his life. As they said, a court-house such as this one was not open for business every day. It was also proper that Judge Truax, who was a real Judge, and not one by courte sy only, as was the young District Attorney, should be upon the bench. He also

was associated with the early days and with the marvellous growth of Zepata City. He had taught the young District Attorney much of what he knew, and his long white hair and silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity and the appearance of calm justice to the bare room and to the heated words of the rival orators.

Colonel Stogart ceased speaking, and the District Attorney sucked in his upper lip with a nervous impatient sigh as he recognized that the visiting attorney had proved murder in the second degree, and that an execution in the jail-yard would not follow as a fitting sequence.

But he was determined that so far as in him lay he would at least send his man back to the penitentiary for the remainder of his life.

Young Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called, was very dear to the people of that booming town. In their eyes he was one of the most promising young men in the whole great unwieldy State of Texas, and the boy orator thought they were probably right, but he was far too clever to let them see it. He was clever in his words and in his deeds and in his appearance. And he dressed much more carefully than any other man in town, with a frock-coat and a white tie winter and summer, and a fine high hat. That he was slight and short of stature was something he could not help, and was his greatest, keenest grief, and that Napoleon was also short and slight did not serve to satisfy him or to make his regret less continual. What availed the sharply cut, smoothly shaven face and the eyes that flashed when he was moved, or the bell-like voice, if every unlettered ranchman or ranger could place both hands on his shoulders and look down at him from heights above? But they forgot this and he forgot it before he had reached the peroration of his closing speech. They saw only the Harry Harvey they knew and adored moving and rousing them with his voice, trembling with indignation when he wished to tremble, playing all his best tricks in his best manner, and cutting the air with sharp cruel words when he was pleased to be righteously just.

The young District Attorney turned slowly on his heels, and swept the courtroom carelessly with a glance of the clever black eyes. The moment was his.

He

saw all the men he knew-the men who made his little world-crowding silently forward, forgetful of the heat, of the suffocating crush of those about them, of the wind that rattled the doors in the corridors, and conscious only of him. He saw his old preceptor watching keenly from the bench, with a steady glance of perfect appreciation, such as that with which one actor in the box compliments the other on the stage. He saw the rival attorneythe great lawyer from the great citynervously smiling, with a look of confidence that told the lack of it; and he saw the face of the prisoner grim and set and hopelessly defiant. The boy orator allowed his uplifted arm to fall until the fingers pointed at the prisoner.

"This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata City of to-day. He comes to us a relic of the past-a past that has brought honor to many, wealth to some, and which is dear to all of us who love the completed purpose of their work; a past that was full of hardships and glorious efforts in the face of daily disappointments, embitterments, and rebuffs. But the part this man played in that past lives only in the rude court records of that day, in the traditions of the gambling - hell and the saloons, and on the head-stones of his victims. He was one of the excrescences of that unsettled period, an unhappy evilan inevitable evil, I might almost say, as the Mexican horse-thieves and the prairie fires and the Indian outbreaks were inevitable, as our fathers who built this beautiful city knew to their cost. The same chance that was given to them to make a home for themselves in the wilderness, to help others to make their homes, to assist the civilization and progress not only of this city, but of the whole Lone Star State, was given to him, and he refused it, and blocked the way of others, and kept back the march of progress, until to-day, civilization, which has waxed great and strong-not. on account of him, remember, but in spite of him-sweeps him out of its way, and crushes him and his fellows."

The young District Attorney allowed his arm to drop, and turned to the jury, leaning easily with his bent knuckles on the table.

"Gentlemen," he said, in his pleasant tones of every-day politeness, "the 'bad

man' has become an unknown quantity in Zepata City and in the State of Texas. It lies with you to see that he remains so. He went out of existence with the blanket Indian and the buffalo. He is dead, and he must not be resurrected. He was a picturesque evil of those early days, but civilization has no use for him, and it has killed him, as the railroads and the barbwire fence have killed the cowboy. He does not belong here; he does not fit in; he is not wanted. We want men who can breed good cattle, who can build manufactories and open banks; storekeepers who can undersell those of other cities; and professional men who know their business. We do not want desperadoes and bad men' and faro-dealers and men who are quick on the trigger. A foolish and morbid publicity has cloaked men of this class with a notoriety which cheap and pernicious literature has greatly helped to disseminate. They have been made romantic when they were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation as a bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid to touch him -afraid, gentlemen--and children and women will point after him as the man who has sent nine others into eternity, and who yet walks the streets a free man. And he will become, in the eyes of the young and the weak, a hero and a god. This is unfortunate, but it is true.