January 2011

The Fabulous River Free Soil and Free Men Before the Explorers

Of all the magic names that drew men on to open the American continent, none has had more of the authentic ring of romance and adventure than Oregon. Originally applied by some imaginative geographer to a nonexistent river, the name came finally to stand for a vast territory of forests and mountains and green river valleys—the Oregon Country, a shadowy land almost as remote as the far side of the moon but offering a promise that pulled men in for generation after generation. First came the explorers, then the fur traders and the incredible mountain men, and finally the authentic settlers; and something of what each of these people imagined and hoped for and experienced clung to the name until, by accretion, it became one of the great place names of American history.

Ross covers one little segment of the story. A bird’s-eye view of the whole business, touching on everything from the arrival of the first Yankee sailing vessel at the mouth of the Columbia in 1792 down to the June night in 1942 when a Japanese submarine lay offshore and lobbed shells in at Fort Stevens, is provided in Stewart Holbrook’s The Columbia , which is a fine book to read after Ross’s book.

Mr. Holbrook undertakes to tell what happened along the Columbia River, which means that he gets pretty much all across the Oregon Country before he is finished; and he tells his story with an unpretentious ease which somehow disguises the fact that at the ancient art of spinning a good yarn he is a superbly competent craftsman.

Letter of August 11, 1949

As the announcement on June 25 of my impending retirement led to some newspaper discussion of the wisdom or unwisdom of my action, it may not be amiss to state for your information and that of other gentlemen who face retirement within the next decade or so, precisely how it feels to “change over,” or, if you prefer the figure, to “make the plunge.”

I can only say that I think I had made the essential preparation in advance by planning my future work and by developing my avocation. I can understand how bewildered and baffled a man might be if he retired on a drastically diminished income and had nothing to occupy his time. As the circumstances are, I simply have turned from one calling to another, so to speak, with an indescribable gain in interest and in every satisfaction of life.

The Vigilantes of San Francisco have been a legend and a byword ever since the 1850’s. According to one view they represented lynch law and violence; according to another they exemplified the Anglo-Saxon tradition by which the citizens work out and enforce codes of justice, order and civic decency informally when formal procedures cease to work. Either way, their story is one of the fascinating chapters in American history.

Alan Valentine has written, in Vigilante Justice (Reynal and Company: $3.50) , an account of Vigilante days which, in his own words, “is a story of the growing pains of San Francisco.” It depicts American democracy in the raw, with men using extralegal means to work their way back to law and order after they had permitted their society to become corrupted. It indicates that the faults men find in society lie ultimately within themselves, and it shows how men may become convinced that they may short-cut government and overrule their own officials.

His sentence was finished in a ringing shriek, for Calamity had drawn a revolver and shot him, even while his sarcastic words left his lips, and he fell to the ground, wounded through the breast.

“ ‘So much for your lyin’, you miserable whelp!’ the girl cried, wrought suddenly to a high pitch of anger. ‘If I was dishonored once, by one such as you, no man’s defiling touch has reached me since …’

“Now she dashed away through the narrow gulch, catching with delight long breaths of the perfume of flowers which met her nostrils at every onward leap of her horse, piercing the gloom of the night with her dark lovely eyes, searchingly, lest she should be surprised; lighting a cigar at full motion …”

Attracted by the glowing panatela, four desperadoes leap from ambush, Colts Hashing, but this vintage cover girl simply rides them down, amid “howls of pain and rage, and curses too vile to repeat here,” and gallops off unscathed, whooping like a Comanche.

One of America’s great shrines is the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. In the shadowed silence of the great building the statue of Abraham Lincoln, by Daniel Chester French, broods in eloquent majesty.

Yet when the statue was first put in the memorial, the effect was very different. Strange lights and shadows touched the marble lace: the effect which the sculptor had sought was missing, and in its place was a masklike countenance that seemed almost a mockery.

Sculptor French made this horrifying discovery in the spring of 1921. just after the statue had been placed in the building. He had worked for eight years on the model, believed that it would do justice to its subject, and he came to the Memorial to put a few finishing touches on the marble.