olence, chief of which in Oregon was $50,000 to the State University for an irreducible fund at least $400 of the interest from which to be used annually in the purchase of books for the University library. He gave a like sum to house the orphan children at Portland. No act of littleness, meanness, oppression, injustice, or dishonor ever stained the escutcheon of his noble career; and he sleeps well on the banks of the Hudson.
BRANCH ROADS.
This paper might properly end here were it not that others have done good work in building branch lines to complete the grand scheme planned by Villard; and which it seems the facts of history require to be recorded in this connection. The principal of these was the narrow gauge system projected by the writer of this paper in 1878 to more completely develop the Willamette Valley. In that year he built the first forty miles of three feet gauge railroad in the State, from Dayton to Sheridan in the Yamhill Valley, with a branch to Dallas in Polk County. In 1880 this road was sold to capitalists in Dundee, Scotland, who, through their agent in Oregon, Wm. Reid, of Portland, extended the lines on the west side of the Willamette River to Airlie in Polk County, and to Dundee, Yamhill County, with an east side of the river branch from Dundee crossing the river at Ray's Landing, thence to Woodburn, Silverton, Scio, and on to Coburg in Lane County. Mr. Villard leased this system (about 200 miles) in 1880; and Mr. Reid on his own capital subsequently extended the line from Dundee to Portland via Newberg; and the whole road thus built was soon after incorporated in the standard gauge system of the Willamette Valley.
Another important branch is the Columbia Southern, traversing Sherman County and built by Mr. Lytle and others from Biggs on the Columbia to Shaniko, seventy
