as to the government of its self-made potentate.  All reports agreed in stating that “Dutchtown,” the generic appellation of German colonies among Americans, was an example to all settlements, and was distinguished above any other place in Oregon for order and prosperity.  The hotel of “Dutchtown,” which stands on the old Overland stage-route, and is now a station on the Oregon and California Railroad, has attained an enviable reputation, and is regarded by all travelers as the best in the State; and as to the colony itself, I heard nothing but praise.  On the other hand, with regard to Doctor Keil the strangest reports were in circulation.  He had been described to me in Portland as a most inaccessible person, showing himself extremely reserved toward strangers, and declining to give them the slightest satisfaction as to the interior management of the prosperous community over which he reigned a sovereign prince.  The initiated maintained that this important personage had formerly been a tailor in Germany.  He was at once the spiritual and secular head of the community:  he solemnized marriages (much against his will, for, according to the rules of the society, he was obliged to provide a house for every newly-married couple); he was physician and preacher, judge, law-giver, secretary of state, administrator, and unlimited and irresponsible minister of finance to the colony; and held all the very valuable landed property of the settlement, with the consent of the colonists, in his own name; and while he certainly provided for his voluntarily obedient subjects an excellent maintenance for life, he reserved to himself the entire profits of the labor of all and the value of the joint property, notwithstanding that the colony was established on the broadest principles as a communist association.

I had a great desire to see this original man—­a kindred spirit of the renowned Mormon leader, Brigham Young—­with my own eyes, and, so to speak, to visit the lion in his den.  From Portland, where I was staying, the colony was easily accessible by rail, and before leaving I made the acquaintance of a.  German life-insurance agent of a Chicago company—­Koerner by name—­who, like myself, wished to visit Aurora, and in whom I found a very agreeable traveling companion.  He had procured in Portland letters of introduction to Doctor Keil, and had conceived the bold plan of doing a stroke of business in life insurance with him; indeed, his main object in going to Aurora was to induce the doctor to insure the lives of the entire colony—­that is to say, of all his voluntary subjects—­in the Chicago company, pay, as irresponsible treasurer of the association, the legal premiums, and upon the occurrence of a death pocket the amount of the policy.

My fellow-traveler had great hopes of making the doctor see this project in the light of an advantageous speculation, and accordingly provided himself amply with the necessary tables of mortality and other statistics.  It had been carefully impressed upon us in Portland always to address the ci-devant tailor, now “king of Aurora,” as “Doctor,” of which title he was extremely vain, and to treat him with all the reverence which as sovereign republicans we could muster; otherwise he would probably turn his back on us without ceremony.