Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/412

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396
Frances Fuller Victor.

amends by unremitting care of the sick and neglected man.

Kelley's experiences were not of a kind to inspire an ambition for colonization. Even Young in his wrath at having been induced to come to so inhospitable a country cursed him as the author of his misfortunes. That Kelley did not die under this accumulation of condemnation and disappointment shows him to have been of a tough and yielding rather than a highly tempered metal.

Notwithstanding his frequent relapses he found opportunities to explore the country in the neighborhood of Vancouver, and to survey the Columbia River to its mouth. He made maps, and wrote a very intelligent and correct account of the whole territory then known as "the Oregon," its topography, mountains, timber, harbors, climate, soil, and minerals, pointing out the facilities for shipbuilding, manufactures and commerce. This information was, on his return to the states, combined in a memoir to congress, from which members undoubtedly drew much of the information which was occasionally displayed in both houses. He renamed the Cascade Mountains, calling them the Presidents' Range; naming also the snow peaks, beginning with Saint Helen, and proceeding south, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, and Jackson—the last named being Shasta. Adams and Jefferson only have been retained by common consent.

As Kelley's quarters were outside the fort there was no hindrance to communication with the twenty or more Americans and others owing no allegiance to the British corporation. That Kelley was visited by these freemen, from whom he derived much assistance in his labors of exploration, is more than probable. An examination of the country showed him that the junction of the Walla-