journey was made more deliberately, but though now relieved of guard duty, Mr. Case felt sleepless, and scarcely rested until some days had passed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE NUMBER AND CONDITION OF THE NATIVE RACE IN OREGON WHEN FIRST SEEN BY WHITE MEN. The first estimates we have of the number of the native race in the valley of the Columbia were by Lewis and Clark, who gained their information while exploring the river from its sources in the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Based upon information derived from the natives, their estimate was forty thousand. This was in 1805-6. Forty years later, Rev. C. G. Nicolay, of King’s College, Oxford, and member of the Royal Geographical Society of London, writing in support of England’s right to the country created by the assumed moral benefits to the natives effected by the trade influences of the Hudson’s Bay Company—and, doubtless, with all the information that company could furnish—estimated the number at thirty thousand, including all the country from the California line north to 54° 40′. Noting that the second estimate is for the wider bounds, and yet twenty-five per cent. less, the numbers seem strongly to indicate that the native race was rapidly decreasing between the dates mentioned. In looking for the causes of this decrease of population of the native race, we find at the outset diseases common to, but not very destructive to civilized life, are, nevertheless, terrible in their effects on people living so near the plane of mere animal life as were the natives of Oregon—especially those of them in the largest valleys, and near the sea,—when first seen by white men. The first American explorers received information from the Clatsop tribe of Indians during their stay near them in the winter of 1805-6, that some time previous to that a malady had been brought to them from the sea, which caused the death of many of their people. As they reached the Lower Willamette Valley, on their return eastward, they found living evidence that the malady had been smallpox, and the remains of capacious houses within the district—now covered, or being rapidly covered, by the white race,—which indicated that the disease had swept out of existence, or caused to flee the locality, large numbers of the natives. A woman was seen by Captain Clark in the company of an old man, presumably her father, sole occupants of a building two hundred and twenty-five feet long and thirty feet wide, under one roof, and divided by narrow alleys or partitions into rooms thirty feet square. Other buildings, empty or in ruins, were found near this. This woman was badly marked with smallpox; and from her apparent age, and information the old man endeavored to convey, this disease had killed many people and frightened others away about thirty years previously.