440 LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS.

they should appear to claim it. A lot for the erec- tion of the jail was offered by McLoughlin, and ac- cepted by the committee. 21 An act was also passed for the protection of Indians in the free use of such pieces of vacant land as they then occupied with tlieir villages or fisheries; and the executive was empow- ered to bring suit in the name of Oregon against persons infringing the rights of the natives to the peaceable possession of such lands.

The two sessions of the committee of 1844 occu- pied less than three weeks, in which time forty-three bills were passed, many of them of general impor- tance. Some of the shorter ones showed the improve- ments to which the accession of population was giving rise. Hugh Burns and Robert Moore were granted rights to keep public ferries on the Willamette ; John McLouuhlin to construct a canal round the falls ; W. H. Wilson and L. H. Judson to construct a mill-race in Champoeg County. Jesse Applegate was appointed engineer to survey for a canal from the crossing of the Tualatin River, down Sucker Creek, to the Willamette River, in order to determine the cost of making this a mode of transportation from the Tualatin plains to the Willamette. Several road acts were also passed.

The legislative committee fixed the pay of the ex- ecutive committee at one hundred dollars each, per annum, for their services, the three receiving nothing above the amount fixed as the salary of the gov- ernor provided for by an act passed the following day. But as the organic law did not contemplate paying the executive committee in anything but honors, one hundred dollars to each might be considered as a gift. The legislative committee voted themselves two dol- lars a day, and the assessor of the revenue the same. 22

21 The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another as a site of a prison.' Hawthorne's Scar-let Letter, 53. 'We are getting along finely,' writes a settler; 'and have already laid the foundation of a jail.' Niles' Reg., lxx. 214.

22 Oregon Laws, 1843-9, 76.