300 POLITICS AND PROGRESS.

lamette River; $30,000 for opening a military road from Steilacoom to Fort Walla Walla; $40,000 for a military road from Scottsburg to Rogue River Valley; $15,000 to build alight-house at the mouth of the Umpqua; $15,000 for buoys at the entrance of that river; and $40,000 tu erect a fire-proof custom-house at that place. He was also instructed to have St Helen made a port of delivery; to have the surveyor general s office removed to Salem ; to procure an in crease in the number of members of council from nine to fifteen, and in the house of representatives from eighteen to thirty ; to ask for a military reconnoissance of the country between the Willamette Valley and Fort Boise; to procure the establishment of a mail route from Olympia to Port Townsend, with post- offices at Steilacoom, Seattle, and Port Townsend, with other routes and offices at Whiclby Island and the mouth of the Snohomish River; to urge the survey of the boundary line between California and Oregon ; to procure money for the continuance of the geologi cal survey which had been carried on for one year previous in Oregon territory; 7 to call the attention of congress to the manner in which the Pacific Mail Steamship Company violated their contract to carry the mail from Panama to Astoria; 8 and to endeavor

sion, the first enacted in the territory, divorces hitherto having been granted by the legislature, which failed to inquire closely into the cause for com plaint. The law made impotency, adultery, bigamy, compulsion or fraud, wilful desertion for two years, conviction of felony, habitual drunkenness, gross cruelty, and failure to support the wife, one or all justification for sev ering the marriage tie. A later divorce law required three years abandon ment, not otherwise differing essentially from that of 1852-3. A large num ber of road acts were passed, showing the development of the country.

7 In 1851 congress ordered a general reconnoissance from the Rocky Moun tains to the Pacific, to be performed by the geologists J. Evans, D. D. Owens, B. F. Shumard, and Norwood. It was useful in pointing out the location of various minerals used in the operations of commerce and manufacture, though most of the important discoveries have been made by the unlearned but prac tical miner. U. S. H. Ex. Doc., 2, pt ii. 7, 32d cong. 1 sess.; U. 8. Sen. Com. Kept, 177, 1-3, 6, 3Gth cong. 1st sess.; Or. Spectator, Nov. 18, 1851; Olym- pia Columbian, Jan. 22, 1852.

8 No steamship except the Fremont, and she only once, had ventured to cross the Umpqua bar. From 1851 to 1858 the following vessels were lost on the southern coast of Oregon: At or near the mouth of the Umpqua, the Boxtonian, Caleb Curtis, Roanoke, Achilles, Nassau, Almira, Fawn, and Loo- Choo; and at or near the entrance of Coos Bay the Cyclops^ Jackson, and two