EDUCATION AND LITERARY SOCIETIES.



dozen straw hats."  "Any pins ?"  "No; a few knitting
needles." "Any yarn?" "Yes, there's a pretty good
lot of yarn, but don't younwant some sugar? the last
ship that was in left a quantity of sugar."  So the holder
of the draft exchanges it for some yarn and a few nails,
and takes the balance in sugar. fairly compelled to be
luxurious in one article, for the. reason that others were
not to be had till'some other ship came in.
  No mails reached the colony, and no letters left it, ex-
cept such as were carried by private hand, or were sent
once a year in the Hudson's Bay Company's express to
Canada, and thence to the States. Newspapers arrived
in the same manner, or by vessel from the Sandwich
Islands. Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, education
was encouraged even from the very beginning; a library
was started, and literary societies formed, and this all the
more, perhaps, that the colony was so isolated and depend-
ent on itself for intellectual pleasures.
  The spring of 1844 saw the colony in a state of some ex-
citement on account of an attempt to introduce the manu-
facture of ardent spirits. This dangerous article had al-
ways been carefully excluded from the country, first by
the Hudson's Bay Company, and secondly by the Meth-
odist Mission; and since the time when a Mr. Young
had been induced to relinquish its manufacture, no seri-
ous effort had been made to introduce it.
  It does not appear from the Oregon archives, that any
law against its manufacture existed at that time: it had
probably been overlooked in the proceedings of the leg-
islative committee of the previous summer; neither was
there yet any executive head to the Provisional Govern-
ment, the election not having taken place. In this di-
lemma the people found themselves in the month of Feb-



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