USA > Oregon > The Oregon native son, 1900-1901 > Part 52
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Mr. Chapman was married in 1878, but is now a widower. He has a family com. prising two handsome daughters, Edith S. and Mabel Chapman.
IN LIFE SCATTER ROSES.
. You may scatter your flowers in greatest profusion, You may tell of my good deeds if any I've done, 'Twill not matter to me if your words and your tokens Are kept till my body lies silent and dumb.
Then, friends, if you've roses to me to be given, Oh, give them to me, please give them just now, Don't wait till my lips cannot speak of their beauty, My eyes loose their lustre and cold is my brow.
And then when my form lies silent and dreamless, Just think of the pleasure that to me you gave- By giving me those dear. sweet roses-
Instead of scattering them over my grave.
-Amanda Glenn Rinehart.
NATHANIEL J. WYETH,
A Pioneer of 1832.
Mr. Wyeth built Fort Hall, so well known to all pioneers who crossed the plains. This was the first regular trading post and fort erected by an American west of the Rocky mountains. He also built Fort William on Wappato ( Sauvie's) Island, shipping therefrom the first cargo of salmon, to be sent from the Columbia river or Pacific Northwest, to the markets of the world.
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A TOUR OF THE WORLD.
JOHN J. VALENTINE, PRESIDENT OF WELLS-FARGO & CO., WRITES HIS FRIEND, AARON STEIN, OF SAN FRANCISCO, AN ACCOUNT OF HIS TRAVELS.
( Published by Special Permission of Mr. Valentine.)
VIENNA, Austria, Jan. 20, 1900. Dear Uncle Aaron:
First in order a word or two of explan- ation: It appears from information at hand that in my Budget No. 19 ( Berlin), third paragraph, by a slip of the pencil I emptied the river Elbe into the Baltic! But that ancient and honorable river did not mind it much, and still does business .. at the old stand, pouring out its ample flood into the North Sea from a mouth fourteen miles wide. It is, however, con- nected also with the Baltic by the Kiel canal, and by certain intermediate watery links, none of which are missing. In No. 18, also ( Warsaw, par 2), by a sim- ilar hurried stroke, I caused the Vistula river to flow into the Baltic both at El- bing and Danzig; whereas the river which discharges its water at the former place is called the Nogat, though it is a recognized branch of the Vistula. Er- rors of this kind have their origin gen- erally in the partial and diminutive maps one has to consult en route on a speedy journey like mine, and with this re- minder the reader, if shocked by discov- ering such, will know how to account for them.
After seven weeks of unremitting sight-seeing in Germany it may be al- lowable to offer a few general remarks on this truly wonderful country; for industrially, commercially and financially it is, in my opinion, the power of Conti- nental Europe. There also seems a pe- culiar propriety in making these obser- vations immediately after visiting Ba- varia. for in that kingdom the Hohenzol- lerns were first known to fame as a dynastic family : and the rise of the Ho- henzollern family has been coincident
with the rise of Prussia, and the rise of Prussia has been coincident with the rise of modern United Germany.
The castle of Nuremberg belonged to the Hohenzollern Burgraves, or fortress counts, during the thirteenth and four- teenth centuries, and they, as events proved, were a thrifty kind of people. At the beginning of the fifteenth cen- tury the Burg-graf Frederick of Ho- henzollern (who held his Margravate at Nuremberg in fief or feudal tenure from Emperor Sigismund, who was himself indebted to Frederick for financial fa- vors) was at war with a rival count (Ludwig), out of which complications arose that caused Frederick to sell the Nuremberg castle to the town. The Ho- henzollerns then repaired to Branden- burg, where they put money into their purses, becoming more and more wealthy and powerful until the Great Elector of Brandenburg made his advent on the scene, and thence a line of kings ensued.
Prussia took its rise and has grown from the Mark of Brandenburg and the former Dukedom of Prussia, the present province of East Prussia and the capi- tal, Konigsberg. In 1701 (January 18) the Elector, Frederick III of Branden- burg (son of the Great Elector ) crowned himself at Konigsberg as King of Prus- sia under the name of Frederick I. About 1720 Pomerania (Stettin) was added to Prussia. Frederick I was the grand- father of Frederick the Great, under whose reign Prussia was much enlarged by the conquest of Silesia, the Seven Years' war, the division of Poland in 1772, West Prussia (Danzig), and in 1793 Poland (Posen. etc. ). The next acquisition was Schleswig-Holstein, in
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1864, Hessen-Nassau and the Kingdom of Hanover in 1866, and the Province (not Kingdom) of Saxony (Halle, Magdeburg, etc.). In other words, the territory of the present Kingdom of Prussia is divided into the following twelve Provinces: East Prussia, with two districts: West Prussia, with two districts ; Brandenburg, with two dis- tricts; Pomerania, with three districts ; Posen, with two districts; Silesia, with three districts; the Province of Saxony (Sachsen), with three districts: Schles- wig-Holstein, with one district; Hano- ver, with six districts; Westphalia, with three districts ; Hessen-Nassau, with two districts ; and the Rhine Province, with five districts. In addition to these twelve provinces, the city of Berlin and the little Brandenburg district of Hohen- zollern, the original seat of the dynasty, constitute one province. Its present pop- ulation in round figures is 32.000,000 ; of whom, approximately 20.000.000 are Protestants, 11,000,000 Catholics and 1,000,000 made up of various indepen- dent sects and Jews.
The Kingdom of Prussia possesses a constitution conceded by Frederick Wil- liam IV in 1848-that year of blessed memory to Continental Europe-drafted by a liberal statesman of no mean ability, namely, Count Waldeck, to whom a marble statue now stands in Berlin. The various provinces are ruled as follows : At the head of each is a so-called pres- ident, such appointments being usually awarded to disabled ministers of the Crown, to which the right of nomina- tion is reserved. Then follow so-called minor presidents at the head of each dis- trict. These are divided into what might be called county councils or land- raths. There are 467 of such officials, representing the . various cities, towns, villages, market-places, etc.
In regard to the present constitutional government of Germany, a federation of states, usually spoken of as an empire, though not so regarded by the Germans, who insistently urge that William II, King of Prussia, is German Emperor, not Emperor of Germany. Of course, the reigning monarch-King or Kaiser-
has a cabinet of ministers, what the Eng- lish call "the Government" ; what we. ca !! "the Administration." The Reichstag consists of 397 members, elected by the direct and secret ballot of 11,000,000 re- corded voters, though not more than 70 per cent of these suffragists have ever exercised the franchise at any one elec- tion. To these 397 members of tlie Reichstag - the lower house - may be added in a general way 58 votes from the Bundesrath or Council of Federa- tion, the upper house. These combined control the legislation of the United States of Germany. The 58 members of the Bundesrath are composed of rep- resentatives of the 26 different German states, apportioned in number according to the importance of the latter. For .example : Prussia gets 17 members ; Ba- varia, 6: Saxony, Wurtemberg and Al- 'sace-Lorraine. 4 each, etc. The Bundes- rath determines the bills to be submitted to the Reichstag, controls the execution of laws, prescribes general administra- tion, has the power to declare war, man- ages finances, customs, etc. Thus it will be seen that the Bundesrath (these 58 members) exercises a very considerable power, which is, however, by no means absolute. Up to 1893 the Reichstag was elected for three years, but since then the term has been made five, and the pre- sent or tenth "Congress," as it were, be- gan in 1898 and expires in 1903. Polit- ically the.Reichstag is constituted as fol- lows: Socialists and Free Liberals, 97 : National Liberals, 47: South German People's party, 8; Alsace-Lorraine, 8: Polish, 14; the Central or Catholic party, 105: Populists, 8: Conservatives (chiefly officials). 54; Imperial party ( also chiefly officials), 23; the German Reform party, 10: Guelphs, 9: and 14 with no fixed party affiliations.
From the data presented it will be seen that Alsace - Lorraine (the latest acquisition, save Heligoland) has full representation as one of the 26 German states which constitute the Confedera- tion, or the Empire, as it is usually called. Alsace-Lorraine has its ow11 government, at the liead of whichi stands the Stadsholder or governor, nominated
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by the Emperor. At present that gov- ernor is Prince Hohenlohe. That state ranks just as high as Wurtemberg or Saxony, each of which sends four mem- bers to the Bundesrath. The population of Alsace-Lorraine is about 1,700,000, and the capital is Strasburg.
I have said nothing whatever of Ger- many's foreign (tropical) colonizing ventures of the past thirty years, because such schemes have confessedly cost more than they come to. as militarism does, but have gone into particulars rela- tive to Germany's states as the opportu- nities for observation enjoyed this win- ter and on a previous visit justify me in venturing the opinion, despite the nota- ble absence of farm houses, and presum- ably holders of small tracts of agricul- tural land, that industrially, commercially and financially, Germany, with its 54,- 000,000 of population, is now the power of Continental Europe. I doubt if Paris, Lyons and Marseilles equal Berlin, Ham- burg and Frankfort in financial power ; and, scientifically and industrially. Ger- man knowledge is peaceably invading all countries. In general intelligence, so- briety and sturdiness of character, the people of Germany have no superiors ; and they are up to date particularly in the arts, sciences and industries that constitute the world's motive power in material progress: though there is still room for improvement here, as there is everywhere else in the world.
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VIENNA.
I will now take up Vienna. the capital of Austria, as a subject of special consid- eration and comment, prior to extending my travels to the city of Constantinople, and possibly to regions beyond. where I shall have an altogether different civili- zation to engage my attention.
I left Munich the morning of the 19th for Vienna, and after eleven hours of travel, arrived there at 9:00 P. M., mak- ing the journey mainly by daylight The distance is something like 250 miles. I lost one hour at Salzburg, the Austrian. frontier and customis station, where, for the first time on this tour, I was held up, as it were, for a petty sum-duty on
about 25 cigars. The first town of im- portance passed after leaving Munich was Rosenheim, in Bavaria, 32 miles southwest : the second Salzburg, and the third Linz, both in Austria-the latter within 98 miles of Vienna.
The country traversed was broken, and before reaching Salzburg presented interesting hill or mountain scenery (timbered as sections of Germany are which have hitherto been described). but became more even near Vienna, which city lies comparatively flat, on the right or south bank of the Danube; though it would perhaps be more accurate to sav the west bank, as the river runs north, northwest to southeast-that is to say, the new river, as it is called ; the De Les- seps Company having about 1875 divert- ed the channel of the Danube at this point so as to bring it into the city, its natural course having described a very acute bend northeastwardly outside and oppo- site Vienna. And here let me interject that the "Beautiful Blue Danube." as I see it, is as turbid as the "Big Muddy" -our own Missouri river. Within the city, originally south of it, was a lagoon or branch of the Danube, that has in the course of time been converted into a neatly walled canal, and the Vienna river is connected with that on the south side -all of which combined now furnish an abundant supply of waterways in and about the capital of Austro-Hungary.
The origin of the city is attributed by some authorities to the Wends sometime before, but in the beginning of the first century it was a Roman military post, named Fabiana, and afterwards, when included in Upper Pannonia. known as Vindo-bono. In those early days one migratory people followed after another so rapidly in overrunning the then track- less forests of the Danube that it is dif- ficult to. keep up with the procession and note the successive order and date of each. Along in 1276, Rudolph of Hapsburg (the latter the name of his castle in Switzerland ) wrested the coun- try known as Austria from the King of Bohemia and made it over to his son Albert, thus founding the reigning house of Hapsburg, which has continued its
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sway ever since. Christianity was intro- duced as early as the seventh or eighth century by Bishop Rupertus, who estab- lished a church here at that time. The ancient Gothic cathedral or Church of St. Stephens, was begun, it is alleged, in the twelfth century, but was not completed until the sixteenth-four hundred years later. It is an interesting specimen of Gothic, with a tower over four hundred feet high. From the topographical pro- jections or charts of the city to be seen in the city hall, it is evident that as late as about the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury Vienna was a place of no particular importance in point of size. It was in- vested by the Turks in 1520. At that time Turkey was the foremost military power of Europe, with the exception, possibly, of Spain. It might be well for the advocates of the "strenuous life"- militarism-to pause and consider this fact-Turkey and Spain once the lead- ing military powers of Europe!
With the assistance of the German al- lies to the westward the Turks were, however, beaten back by the Austrians on this occasion from their capital city ; but only to return and reinvest it a hun- dred and fifty years later-1683-when John Sobieski, of Poland, came to its relief, which neighborly act was perfid- iously rewarded a hundred years later by Austria's participation in the criminal acts of aggression by which Poland was divided up among the warring nation- alities.
The marked growth of Vienna began one hundred and fifty years ago, under Maria Theresa, with whom, and her powerful allies (herself no ordinary an- tagonist), Frederick of Prussia main- tained for the best part of ten years his heroic struggle for supremacy that won him his title of "Great." The contest was provoked by him and maintained for two years, when, after having wrested Silesia from her. to avoid growing com- plications, it was terminated by a treaty of peace ; but her subsequent determined effort to recover this lost province was. the occasion of the Seven Years' war, in which Frederick again came off victor- ious. Portraits and statues of Maria
Theresa are as miich in evidence in Vienna as those of Frederick are in Ber- lin and Potsdam. But the greatest strides of progress in Vienna, like those of all other cities of Northern and West- ern Europe, have been made within the last fifty years. What is called the old palace was chiefly built by Maria The- resa. To this has been added under the present Emperor, Francis Joseph, a handsome structure of magnitude. All the other important buildings connected with the imperial administration have been erected within the last thirty-five or forty years, on a plat of ground which in old times was occupied by the citadel. The moats around this were filled up and the adjacent buildings razed to the ground, and in their stead have been erected the House of Parliament, the Palace of Justice, the City Hall, the Uni- versity, the Academy of Fine Arts, the Museum of Natural History, the Na- tional Art Gallery ,the Imperial Opera House, the Imperial Theatre, the Church of the Redeemer, Police Department headquarters, the Stock Exchange and various other buildings too numerous to mention-all of. comparatively mod- ern style of architecture with suitable variations.
The House of Parliament is purely Greek, and from my standpoint of ar- chitecture is one of the handsomest structures to be seen anywhere. On the other hand, the Church of the Redeemer is pure Gothic, and if one had never seen the cathedrals at Cologne and Milan would be deemed a superb edifice of its kind. But the especial beauty of the Cologne and Milan cathedrals are the sky-piercing spires, while those of the Church of the Redeemer at Vienna are stumpy. The City Hall is probably among the first in point of magnitude. and it would be hard to say what its architecture is. Estimated by the heiglit of its stories, including an old German roof, and the finish of the walls out- wardly and those facing the central court. it appears to be a combination of Gothic and Renaissance, with here and there a trace of Venetian. This description sug- gests an architectural hodge-podge, vet
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the effect is not such, it being a really handsome structure. The inside of the building, which is in some respects a museum as well as providing accommo- Nations for the various departments of the city government, is very handsome and interesting. The Royal Opera and the Royal Theater are Romanesque in style - massive, spacious and imposing inside. The Roval Theater, takng it al- together, exterior and interior. is a most elegant structure of its kind. The Palace of Justice, like the Museum of Natural History and the Gallery of Arts. I shall call modern, for want of a better de- scriptive term; and in this list I might put the University-a single building- and in this respect an exception to those of Germany as described in a previous budget, which consist of a number of buildings. The University here must be from 650 to 700 feet square, the interior open court being not less than 300 feet square, and this one building is sub- divided into no less than 43 separate departments for the various branches of knowledge taught therein-not to men- tion the library-which, as one feature of it, is so arranged as to furnish nine stories for the storage of books, of which it contains, among countless originals and manuscripts. no less than 500,000 volumes : at least so the janitor informed me. He also told me that from five to seven thousand students attend the Uni- versity annually. These are not all the buildings I visited, and I will not under- take to mention all. Referring to one of the others-the Church of the Capu- chins-is a little, unimposing structure, with a basement or vault about one story high, that is now used for roval mor- tuary purposes (similar to the church in St. Petersburg, wherein the bodies of Russia's emperors and their families re- pose), at one time an honor attaching to the Church of St. Stephens in this city. Here are rooms full of sarcophagi made of silver, bronze and mixed metals. in which rest the remains of Austria's emperors, empresses and their children : among them those of the late empress, and her unhappy son, Prince Rudolphi, side by side, and of whom it may be said :
"After life's fitful fever they sleep well."
The treasury is a collection of royal valuable belongings similar to that of the Hermitage of St. Petersburg, "the Treasury" at Moscow, the Museum of Arts and Industries at Berlin and the Green Vault at Dresden. A unique feature of Vienna is the palace of a po- tentate who reigns elsewhere - Prince Lichtenstein-whose domain is a little dukedom of about 20,000 people be- tween Wurtemberg, Germany, and Up- per Austria.
Vienna, as other European cities, has its large park, "The Prater," which is located in the western part of the city. In it are cafes, etc., and there in the summer the Viennese go for a breath of fresh air and to listen to sweet strains of music from various bands. The city also has a liberal sprinkling of monu- mental statues, etc., some of which are of the colossal order and striking. Its collections of paintings do not equal those of Berlin, Dresden or Munich in either number or quality.
And here let me mention another of Napoleon's predatory outrages. In the National Art Gallery of pictures, on the main landing of the grand stairway, is now placed Canova's famous group of "Theseus Slaving the Centaur," or the Triumph of Cilivization over Barbarism. This splendid creation of genius was chiseled out of one great mass of Italian marble, and after much labor got into position in Vienna; vet Napoleon had it sawed in two to be carted to Paris. How was that for Christian civilization and the strennous life ?
Vienna is reputed to have 1.400,000 population, and this heterogenous mass has not impressed me as favorably as that of cities farther westward, nor even north of Germany. In a capital city extremes meet more. frequently than elsewhere, and there being nine national- ities in the Austro-Hungary Empire, each speaking its own language, to-wit, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Croatians, Slavonians. Trans- sylvanians and Jews, there are, of course, representatives of each to be met with here. These nine people, more or less
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FISH WHEEL, COLUMBIA RIVER.
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A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY DAYS.
mixed up, are located in fifteen provinces, 1, follows: Upper Austria (which is west of Vienna), Lower Austria (in which the city is located), Bohemia, Moravia, Styria, Krunthen, Krain, Gal- 1:cia, Tyrol, Hungaria, Crotia, Slavonia, Transsylvania, Silesia and Lutterali. The combination of all these elements make up a sort of racial and political "lobscouse" (Captain John Bermingham will understand the term) which has not impressed me agreeably ; and the govern- ment of them suggests to me Mr. Doo- ley's sage remark about the United States-"If these people can ever learn to govern themselves, they will be able to govern anybody." The Austrian Ger- mans are a less attractive people than those of the so-called German Empire.
Whether the present Emperor of Aus- tria has governed well or otherwise, his life's experiences have been so singu- larly tragical, pathetic and sorrowful, that he deserves and receives the kindly sym- pathy and good will of all his subjects. To the average mind an emperor or a
king is a person to be envied, but think of the irony of fate in connection with his misfortunes! His brother, the ill- starred Maximilian, shot to death at Queretero, Mexico; poor Carlotta, his sister-in-law, wife of Maximilian, wear- ing out her life in a madhouse; Ru- dolph, his son and crown prince, killing himself for loving not wisely, but too well; the Baroness Vecera, the Prince's paramour, sharing his fate at Meyerling ; the Empress, his wife, stabbed to death by a nihilist at Geneva not long ago; and but a short time afterward her sister burned to death in the Paris Fair fire. Closely related to the family are King Ludwig of Bavaria, who killed his keeper and drowned himself; and King Otto, his successor, now confined in a madhouse. Amidst all this cumulative woe, Franz-Joseph, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, has lived on, a patient, uncomplaining and really grand personality, for he "has learned that life hath room for many cares and many woes."
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A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY DAYS.
William H. Wilson, a pioneer of 1843, still lives on his donation claim in Yon- calla valley. He knew our Oregon when it was under the old Hudson's Bay Com- pany's rule, when there was a provisional and a territorial government and finally when it became one of the stars on the nation's flag. When he can be induced to talk of the people and scenes of early days his conversation is very interest- ing. He is the survivor of the three men who were shot at Oregon City in 1844 by a little band of bad Indians led by a malicious native named Cock-Stock. The other two men were George le Bre- ton, the secretary of the provisional gov-
ernment, and Sterling Rodgers. Recent- ly the writer of this listened to Mr. Wil- son as he related the particulars of that circumstance as he remembered it. His narrative was substantially as follows : . "The Indian Cock-Stock was an ag- gressive, impudent fellow, a kind of des- perado, belonging to the Molalla tribe, not a chief of that or any other tribe, but the leader of a few young, reckless, hot-headed Indians. He was always try- ing to stir up and increase ill-will be- tween the Indians and white people, and was especially vindictive towards the Methodist missionaries, who had repri- manded him for his evil ways.
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"Some time in February, 1844, I hap- pened to be at Dr. Elijah ,White's house (he was a kind of Indian agent) when complaint was brought to him of some misconduct of Cock-Stock, who was re- ported to be at an Indian camp near by. The Doctor asked me to ride with him down to the camp and help him arrest the Indian. As we rode along he told me something of the trouble this Indian had been giving him and something of the uneasiness he felt in regard to disagree- ments between Indians and settlers that he was instrumental in creating. He gave me a description of his conduct, telling me how frightened the white women and children in the vicinity were of him. The Doctor seemed to think that there would be no end to his misconduct until Cock- Stock was arrested or killed. When we arrived at the camp we could find noth- - ing of him.
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