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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1877)
222 THE WEST SHORE. August. !V Mlth. B 1IOFFKTT. 1 had u Jrtuiii, 11 rlrvaiu last uight, I u tlie moon, in her iplsnilor bright, Gome forth in the calm, -till night, To brighten licuvun's highway. I mw, us it wero, it silvery stream, In whirh wis uiirrar'd, bjthoni'Xia's bright beam, A iige of life, from whiih to gleam Knowledge of a future day. I htiw, close by, oti angel band, Satted there ou tbe pubbly itraud, 1 1. jiii 11 n - music soft m i grand From many a harpsichord ; Atid I asked them, might I read, Wbat in that puge was decreed, So 1 li it I could give a lined, And avoid lUt'i great discord. Ttiuy smiled and iniirniur'd soft aud low, Hut whether it was yes or no, Pol me to stay, or for to go, T-W the life of inu 1 could not wiy ; Vet, I vowed that I would see What therein was written of uio, Twill fraught with such perpleiity, I was glad to turn away. I 1 i k wim looked again. Saw leu ol pleasure, more of pain, Written under every uanie, Which caused me tearful grief; I'hi u a voice fell on the air, Saying, " Mortal, ne'er despair, , There is much in life that's very fair. And a mortal's lim is so brief." Tbtfl angels tool me by tbe hand, An ) led mu through a llow'ry land, And in words so tendur and grand, Liudly bade me never fear; When Uie time on earth should come, Por us to wander home, Though we must go alone, Angels would be uear. Than I seemed to limit in dreamy bliss, II it 1 was so sure of this. That it could not be nil a dream ; I Jelt tin weight of perfumed air, Jf heaven's own breath, upon my hair, find knew I then should noun be there, In Ileuven's own realm. ORBQON. iiv o.vitKTH. (Douglas county.) U OrtfOU, dear laud that gavu me birth I Thou liest alike the fabled lotos laud, The grandest, fairest clime in nil the earth, llnghtly itabomd with green, on every hand, Thy valleys lie the shrines of love and mirth, for thou doll never curse Ihy sons with dearth Of (nod, but, by IVitle's gentle bftUM fanned, They trail the tmit u Uod'i gmit wisdom Planned. II iw iWfttlj 00 to us Dftch gentlo i-iring, With all its wealth of smiling skies nud Bowtfl 11 l lightly, then, thy youths incline toaiug ' if love, tbn' all its dreamy, tender hours, An 1 proudly, to Ibaii mother! altar, bring tllftd pean, which, through coming yiars, shall ring Pond praises to jrottf streams and muuntaiu towers, I I ieet, mysterious, mother laud of MM ! Am) so tblO all Die seasons of the year Uriftht suinmei's wealth and Autumn's ptiucely turv, Anil Winter's fireside comforts still moredeor, Inspires our grateful praises more and more. An I all our hopes, into a future grand, i: ich out, aud nearer, still, we see the time Whoa commerce, art, invention bleu the land, And when the kiiii shall warm no mightier clime. MeUtllka, that he, who "neath these awful peak, First draws the breath of life, ia horn a king. Not to the pOWMf which some DMA tyrant seeks, II it tVmi to lead m inkiud, destined to bring Into rl.e liMt and strife of this mad world, I htl ealui, clear uiiud aud ftjfUsM heart that The applause ol listening miliums, aud hath hurled letf to its ,oud n treat, all sliaHs sin. V . unto thee, dear land of hills and streams, 1 1 tfiveu to roar, the men of uughtr tout, lit whom the Old World's foud Aroadian dreams Shall live again, and while the agoe roll, Mright history's muse shall rati her at thy shrine. I'lHilOil that hr, as the once accur-wd man. At li.i, hath come within the pate divine, And. Mrtuom, might have frewt us from the MM. north, according to his reckoning- as town of Acapulco, from the deck of 44, he certainly passed the mouth of one of the Pacific Mail Company s the Umpquaj but he says nothing of steamer? who beholds no cultivated the coast thereabouts, and probably was j country in its environs, and sees noth prevented from seeing it by fogs. ling more civilized, perhaps, than the It is quite a noticeable fact that every naked Indian divers, and venders of expedition by sea lost great numbers of! fruit and shells no vision of past great its men, from which wc may infer the hardships of navigation in the small ships then in use, as well as the un wholesome food with which they must have been supplied. Certain it is that the Spaniards endured incredible suffer ings both In their sea and land expedi tions, without beine at all deterred by them. Their enthusiastic zeal in dis covery, however, fostered by the greed of gold, tempted them to exploits that have no parallel in history. Led on by tins, tney not only discovered new coasts and surveyed them, but they penetrated to the very heart of wilder ness countries, exploring great rivers from their outlet to their source, ac quiring titles to the territory drained by them, which other nations long after were bound to respect. In this inan ner they had, as early as 1543, gained all of the country lying west of the Rooky mountains and south of AO as Well as that large and undefined terri tory then known as Florida, lying north of the Gulf of Mexico, and west of tbe Mississippi river. It is somewhat curious that with all their expeditions, both bv sea and land, they acquired so false an idea of the extent of the continent. They seemed always to be expecting to come upon that much desired passage to India, the search for which deserves an epic as much as did the far-famed Argonautic expedition of the Greeks, the Indian passage and the Golden fleece being equally fabulous. And still, after pass ing 440 north, they persevered. They, on this coast, believed that the Atlantic coast was not far to tbe cast of their California discoveries; and, on rflie other, that it was but a little way to the Pacific. Thus Hernando de Soto, when about to undertake the conquest of Florida, claimed that Mendoia had no right to the cities of Cibola, because they were within his military district ! The profitless and expensive exje ditions ordered by this Viceroy had considerably dampened the ardor of the Mexican authorities, however, ami be ing satisfied by the reports of Cabrillu and Perrelo that no civilized nations existed as far north as they had sailed, the search was temporarily abandoned, while they turned their attention to the acquisition of territory in China and India. Tor twenty years a stru-'ule was car- j ried on between Spain and Portugal tt the possession of the Philippine Islands. In 1564 Miguel tie Legazpi, with a force raised in Mexico, sue ness is likely to be presented. Sleepy, poor and deserted as Acapulco seems to-day, it had a commerce three hun dred years ago which was the envy of Europe. From its picturesque harbor sailed large ships, called galleons, for Manilla, in the Philippine Islands, and Afacno, in China, whither thev carried gold, silver, and European merchan dise, and whence thev brought the coveted silks, gems, spices and mer chandise of the Indies. The discovery of the region of vari able winds brought these richly freighted galleons on their homeward voyage, sometimes off the coast of Ore gon; and there is every probability, that as they did not always escape wreck, the sands of Clatsop beach, or other beaches farther south, conceal treasure that the sea, centuries aro. wrested from adventurous mariners in the service of bold and crafty Spain. Only one authenticated narrative of such wreck has come down to us, and that one is taken from Franchcres Arar- rathe, written by one of the clerks of the Astor expedition of a recent period; This writer says that when he was at the Cascades of the Columbia, in 1S12, he met an old man, and blind, who called himself Soto, and who said his father was a white man, one of four survivors of a shipwreck at the mouth of the Columbia; that these four white men had at first taken Indian wives, and tried to adapt themselves to Indian customs, but that becoming discon tented they had forsaken their wives and children and gone toward the South, hoping to reach their own coun try. The name given by this old half breed being Spanish, confirms the story, which is nowise Improbable, Hut this wreck must have occurred two Centuries later than the century of Spain's greatest glory; and whatever losses she sustained by tempests on the Oregon coast, are secrets of the in- -rutablc past. Only "red-headed" In dians, ami occasional wax candles of enormous size, thrown un hv heafrv ven to this day, point to incidents in the history of times that must go for ever unrecorded. However, the things we imagine, may have been. Fran cisco Gall, on one of the home voyages of a merchantman, in isSi, claimed to have discovered the coast in latitude 57"; though why he should have been so far out of his course, does not an. pear. And now Spain became aware that she had more possessions of valuable. ceeded m gaming the mastery, and but uncivilised territory, than the knew revenging his nation on their Porta- what to do with, and began to adopt a guete rival. On his return to Mexico j policy as singular as it was character he made a most valuable discovery, listic and fatal, of restricting immigra l p to this time one of the principal j t ion from home, and excluding it from discouragements to a commerce with abroad, in a manner inconceivably ab Avia had been the prevailing direction surd to a modem mind. She had found ol the winds on that portion of the .colonies of soldiers unlit to possess a Pacific ocean which was known to country, and she knew of no other plan " '.v.v " 'i cniotii.iiion 10111 h..r OmSmmA I IKIl'M U'U'MTKKS ON THE I'.VIKK- COAST. " . r. r. in,, till nMi,h MMWrtlty I'liu liulisnitnti 11.0,1 i,v Spanish i 'gators three hundred ycr ago If" perfect limn tho.c in us,- .,, the prSMDl 'lav, SSSCS then U often .1 1, lancy between I heir calculation! 111 1 oursj Inn, as Perraldo sailed n far -"iSifilS! S 85 ? '- MS ill nVkM. certain War, three of Lenta piS vessels . "ii tin- return ravage took a northerly course from the Philippines, and there- ! bj came into a region of variable wfatda that wafted Ihcin to the northern Call- ; liiriiin coast, where they fell in with the northwesterly wind, so w ell known to modern commerce, which soon sk-iI then home to Mexico. This discov. cry, wilh others in navigation, gave a I great impetus to trans-Pacific trade, mil ultimately to other di-coveriv- of ( lerriloiy. I o the traveler of to-day w ho sees only thepm.ll .! ihabbV Mexican own people; or, suspicions that heads of powerful colonics might use their power to se cure the government to themselves, was guarded in conferring patents; or, fearing that if the value of her posses sions should become know n, she would be in danger of losing them w hether one or all of theae motives governed her in forming her policy, it w as meant to be absolutely prohibitory as regarded settlement. From a period beginning about 1 70, all discoveries of importance were carefully concealed, and such re port! of the terrors of the Magellan Strait, circulated a- should deter the navigators of other nations from at tempting to thread thepl. Still secretly searching for a better route to India, it was intended to guard it when found against the entrance of any other Euro pean vessels. Death was the penalty affixed to the crime of a foreigner who should touch upon territories claimed by Spain, or even sail in seas contigu ous to them. Meantime nearly seventy years had elapsed since the discovery of the Pacific ocean, and the standing of Spain as a maritime power had suf fered a considerable reduction the reason, perhaps, of her extraordinary caution the caution being an indica tion of conscious weakness. KIHsr APPBAHANCl OK THE ENGLISH ON THE PACIFIC. As the power of Spain in Europe de clined, that of England rose, and it was not without excuse that some appre hensions were felt of the intentions of this growing rival. The first little flurry that disturbed the calm of the Pacific seas, was when one John Oxen- ham, an Englishman, having crossed the Isthmus a little to the west of Panama, succeeded in building a vessel, which he contrived to get to sea, and with w hich he took several prizes from the Spaniards. In return he was cap.' turcd, and put 10 death, with all his crew. Hut this example did not serve to terrify the English. Henry VIII. had repudiated papal authority, and with it all regard for the treaties of Catholic sovereigns whereby the oceans were partitioned between themselves to the exclusion of the rest of mankind. His noble daughter Elizabeth continued to maintain the Protestant against the Catholic faith, at the same time she strengthened her navy until it had be come a power upon the high sens. Among her captains was one denom inated the "sea-king" Francis Drake, by name who had acquired a fortune in pursuit of Spanish prizes which he had three times crossed the Atlantic to secure. On the occasion of the last voyage he had imitated Balboa) ascend ing a mountain on the Isthmus of Panama which overlooked two oceans, aud there making a vow to sail upon the Pacific or South Seas, and "make a perfect discovery of the same." Five years Captain Drake took to prepare for the performance of his vow, and then he set sail, in 1577, for the soutn Seas, with a licet of five vessels, ranging from fifteen to one hundred tons burthen. A formidable fleet this. truly! Yet it did good service, as will be seen Irom the sequel; as much of it, at least, as survived the perils of a long voyage, protracted by cruising about for prizes. He had three vessels left when he made the run of the Magellan Straits in sixteen days a very success ful exploit. Hut w hen he was quite out ol the straits a severe storm separated them, anil he was driven south to 57", and tossed about for two months by w inds and currents around Cape Horn, finding himself at the end of that time with only one vessel left with which to prosecute his voyage of "perfect discov ery." lint his loss had been the world's gain; for in that long tossing hither and yon in that far southern latitude, Drake had discovered that here was the end of the continent, and that ships could pass from the Atlantic into the Pacific without encountering the ter rors of the dreaded straits. From this, too, he took a hint, and after avenging the fate of Oxenham by a wholesale plunder of the richly laden galleons on the coast of Peru, and seizing the great galltvn as she arrived from the Indies, be sailed away northward, expecting to find at the other end of the continent the two oceans, meeting as they did about Cape Horn. He was afraid of