Then the band strikes up, and the crowd disperses. Most get back to the city by one of the miscellaneous wagons, or hacks, or omnibuses pressed into the service of the fair; the rest betake themselves to their camping-places among the oak-grubs, after supplying themselves with meat and bread from one or other of the temporary stores set up at one side of the grounds. [Sidenote: _CRICKET IN PUBLIC._] This year the visitors had a new sensation in seeing cricket played on the fair-ground, to most of them a new sight. Portland is blessed with a cricket club, mostly supported by the emigrants from the old country. Corvallis has a similar advantage. The Portlanders, in the pride of their strength, and heralded by a paragraph in the "Oregonian" newspaper, that the "team selected to beat the Corvallis athletes" had gone up to Corvallis, had come for wool and gone home shorn. So, as a return-match was under discussion, it was determined to accept the invitation of the fair committee and play the return on the fair-grounds for the amusement of the visitors. Accordingly, the game was duly played out, and ended again in a one-innings defeat of proud Portland, to the delight of the spectators from the valley, who are generally a little jealous of the airs and graces of the hustling town which calls herself the metropolis of the Northwest. There was some difficulty in keeping the ground clear; the ladies particularly could not comprehend the terrible solecism they were committing in tripping bravely across, to speak, to "point," and chat with the wicket-keeper. If you could but have seen the horror-stricken faces of one or two of our eleven, accustomed to the rigor of the game at Cambridge, Rugby, or Cheltenham! CHAPTER XVI. History of Oregon--First discoverers--Changes of government--Recognition as a Territory--Entrance as a State--Individual histories--"Jottings"-- "Sitting around"--A pioneer in Benton County--How to serve Indian thieves --The white squaw and the chief--Immigration in company--Rafting on the Columbia--The first winter--Early settlement--Indian friends--Indian houses and customs--The Presbyterian colony--The start--Across the plains--Arrival in Oregon--The "whaler" settler--A rough journey--"Ho for the Umpqua!"--A backwoodsman--Compliments--School-teacher provided for--Uncle Lazarus--Rogue River Cañon--Valley of Death--Pleasant homes --Changed circumstances. Taking note of the civilized and settled condition of so large a part of this State, it is hard to credit that it was only in 1831 that the first attempts at farming in Oregon were made by some of the men in the Hudson Bay Company's service, and that in 1838 the first printing-press arrived. This valued relic is now preserved in a place of honor in the State Capitol building at Salem--more accordant with the spirit of the times than rusty armor or moth-eaten banners. The early history is somewhat misty, but the following slight sketch is, I believe, accurate: