Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/258

 246 REVEREND EZRA FISHER change in its business appearance during the last four months. We have now four wholesale stores and fourteen retail dry- goods stores, and probably four times the amount of goods are sold in a month as in the same month last year. We have now a large foundry in operation, where mill irons and all the castings for our river steamboats may be made. On the opposite side of the river a permanent breakwater is being constructed for the double purpose of rendering available the water power and putting it in requisition, and letting the boats from the upper trade down to receive the merchandise at the foot of the falls. Two steamboats are now building in our city and one just above the falls, in a village, half a mile above the place, called Canema, in which place there are two or three drygoods stores, an extensive plough factory and other mechanic shops. Our population are all the while changing, yet the tendency is toward a permanent increase. Several large business houses have been built this season ; three or four more are now on the way and will be completed in five or six weeks, and it is said that the number does not meet the demand. It appears to me that, under these circumstances, the demand for a good profes- sional teacher in our schools is imperious. In the department of teaching, and, as a member of our feeble church, acting as superintendent of our Sunday school, such a man's influence will no doubt be felt in Oregon more than the labors of any pastor of any of our churches. I know not how to cherish the thought that Br. Post must stop at San Francisco for want of means to bring his family from that to this place. I know not how cheaply Br. Thomas carries his goods to San Francisco, but I do know that it costs nearly half as much to ship from that place to Oregon as it does to ship from N. Y. to Oregon. Br. Post, in my estimation, had better have shipped himself and family on board the clipper Hurricane for Oregon than to leave half his family in N. Y., take the other half and his furniture to San Francisco and a few cases of books to Ore- gon. To me this does not look quite enough like burning the ship. However, I will do what I can in the case. But the