This Hudson Bay Company is a terrible curse to this country. It is diametrically at war with our best interests. It is British in all its features. It is uncongenial in its structure, nature and operations with our laws and institutions. It is thoroughly hated by our people, and its falstaffian managers hate and despise everything savoring of Americanism.... We believe the time has arrived when this deadly Upas tree should be torn from our soil. It grows nothing but evil fruit, and can well be dispensed with; and we further fervently hope that the United States government may never be induced to bestow the first dime upon this miserable, bullying corporation for their imaginary possessory rights.
5
"Oregon Winters"
The Oregon Argus, Oregon City, December 8, 1855
W. L. Adams, Editor
"The first real red Republican newspaper in Oregon is the distinction accorded the Oregon City Argus, started with W. L. Adams as editor, April 21, 1855. The Spectator was now dead, and its plant was used to print the Argus. Adams was a minister of the Christian denomination. He and Asahel Bush of the Statesman kept the air frequently full of journalistic fur. Neither was in the habit of 'pulling' his editorial punches, and it was 'Airgoose' on the one side and 'Ass-of-Hell Bush' on the other." W. L. Adams was author in 1852 of a locally famous satire, A Melodrame Entitled Treason, Stratagems and Spoils, by Breakspear, in connection with which much more will be said about him in the next chapter called "The First Five Literary Books."
This makes our eighth winter in Oregon, and it comes about as near being an average one as any we recollect to have seen. The oldest settler in this country never saw two winters alike; we believe there has never been a winter known here in which the land suffered with the drouth. Rain we always expect, and rain we always get in quantities that justify us in concluding it has "set in," some time between the middle of October and the tenth of November. Some winters we have a great deal of snow, and some none.
