Page:Marcus Whitman, Pathfinder and Patriot.djvu/131

Rh The summer of 1838 was very favorable for vegetation, and the mission crops were abundant Many of the Indians also had fair crops, enough to show them how much more comfortably they might live by agriculture than by the chase, and many more prepared to follow their example the following year.

In March, 1838, Mrs. Whitman wrote her parents that two years had passed and she had not received a single letter from the loved ones there. The following July, on the 11th, two years and four months after leaving home, she received the first letters, dated January and August of the year before. More were received in August, brought by the band of missionaries who came that year, and then she had to wait two years longer for her next letters from the East. Of newspapers, too, she says, in September, 1838, that she had seen none of any kind except a few numbers of the New York Observer for 1836. She wrote her sister about that time that they must calculate that it would be three years before either of them could expect to receive an answer to any letter which they should write. She, however, wrote, September 25, 1838, "When the contemplated railroad over the Isthmus of Darien shall have been opened, which is expected to take place within two or three years, I hope communications will be more frequent than they are at the present time." This is the first mention of a railroad at that place seen by the author, and seems strange, when we take into consideration the state of the coast at that time.

Visits, too, were very infrequent. It was not until November, 1837, that she was able to go and see her nearest white female neighbor, Mrs. Spalding, after a separation of about a year. At that time the four parents gave their two daughters to God in baptism, for Mr. and Mrs. Spalding had their little Iliza, bom November 15th, 1837. Of this event, Mrs. Whitman wrote: "We had the unspeakable satisfaction of giving away our babes to Ood, and having the seal of that blessed covenant placed upon their foreheads. Surely, dear mother, if this is a comfort to mothers in a Christian land, it is doubly so in the midst of heathen. We also had the privilege of commemorating the dying love of the Saviour, a blessing which we