Commenting upon the road from the upper waters of the Sweetwater to Fort Hall, Professor Schafer says: "When we inquire into what motive could have induced Wilkes to deliberately deceive his readers with reference to this piece of road, only one natural answer suggests itself. He evidently was doing it in the interest of his railroad scheme."
The writer remembers vividly that part of the road in 1852. A lad of eight years, in common with the women and other children of the party, he trudged afoot along many weary miles of this road, up and down many long and, to his mind, interminable hills, through the biting frost of early morn and the torrid heat of midday, and he can testify to its roughness and manifold difficulties.
Against Prof. Schafer's comment I wish to protest most emphatically. Mr. Wilkes was a man of high ideals, of lofty public spirit. It was impossible for him to "deliberately deceive" anyone. To attempt deceit carries with it unworthy or dishonest motives. A reader of Wilkes' writings, his books, pamphlets and newspapers, will find an entire absence of selfishness or wish for private gain or personal aggrandizement at the expense of anyone.
One writer has described the style of the book as "flamboyant," which is doubtless true, but greater faults than this can readily be forgiven one not more than twenty-seven years of age who devotes his splendid talents, his time and his money to the exploitation of a colossal national improvement that for the period of seventy years ago was of infinitely more importance to the United States, and especially to the Pacific Coast, than the Panama Canal of today. By most people his proposal was thought more impossible of achievement than today would be an effort to establish a line of airships between the earth and the moon. He was a little more than twenty years in advance of his time. The first transcontinental line was completed in 1869 and the scandals that followed its construction served to prove Wilkes' contention about the unwisdom of subsidizing railroads by land grants or money and still permitting private ownership of them.
Particular importance attaches to this book for another reason. The migration of 1843, consisting of about 900 men, women and children, who brought with them large numbers of horses and cattle, fruit trees, etc., was the first large one. It strengthened the hands of the men who had at all times demanded that the claims of Great Britain to any part of Old Oregon south of latitude 49 degrees should be resisted at all hazards, by force of arms if necessary. The speeches of Linn, Benton, Calhoun, Webster, Clay and nearly all the notable men of the period between 1819 and 1846 show a surprising knowledge of the soil, climate, productions of land and water, its commercial advantages and all the varied details of the grazing and agricultural possibilities of Old Oregon. The record shows that these matters were familiar to these great men before an American missionary or American settler had reached Oregon.
Until many years later no member of that migration published an account of it except these letters to the Herald and fragmentary notes from others. The journals of Burnett and others, so far as they have been given to the public, were jotted down from time to time by men wearied by unremitting toil, who had no time or disposition to record more than the briefest itinerary of the day. Therefore, with all its faults, Wilkes' book is of priceless value as a memorial to Congress about the Oregon of that period and the history of its local events and men of seventy years ago.
To one familiar, as was the writer of this paper, with the remarkable editorials appearing in the Spirit of the Times during all the Civil War period, with their vigorous English, their fervent loyalty and lofty patriotism, the style of the book is not comparable, but in giving the salient facts about the migration and the conditions then existing in the Willamette Valley it is so accurate that an occasional slip of the pen can be readily condoned.
At the time of his death, which occurred September 23, 1885, the New York Herald and the Times each devoted nearly a column to his obituary and other newspapers of that city and other Atlantic cities made more or less extended mention of him and his life.
The Librarian of the New York Public Library has furnished me with photostat reproductions of the obituaries of Mr. Wilkes published by the New York Herald and Times and the Spirit of the Times. The latter article, dated September 26, 1885, is given in full below:
"We regret to record the death, in this city, on Wednesday, of George Wilkes, one of the founders and proprietors of The Spirit of The Times, and for many years its sole editor. Mr. Wilkes joined the staff of this paper when it was called Porter's Spirit. A division of the proprietorship having occurred, he continued its publication under the title of Wilkes' Spirit until 1866, when his name was dropped. He lived abroad for several years, in the enjoyment of an ample income, which enabled him to indulge his cultivated tastes, and returned here a few months ago, as if he felt some premonition of his approaching death, and desired to rest in his native land, which he loved enthusiastically and served zealously.