Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/107

 99

CORRESPONDENCE

of which the people pledge themselves they will pay. They I therefore ask your Board to pay him $600 of the $800.

have the impression that your acquaintance with Br. Boyakin's reputation as a preacher is better than mine. I think he has been favorably known ,both in Illinois and Missouri, as an I

effective Baptist preacher. I

have with him that he

in Portland.

think from the short acquaintance

well adapted to get up an interest commends himself at once to the people as

He

is

an eloquent man well acquainted with that form of human nature which develops itself in our rising towns in the West. He seems to have the true missionary spirit. Should he continue to wear as he now promises, we have no man in Oregon so well adapted to that field as he is. I think he will need $800 salary to support his family (of 7 persons I believe) in I think the people will supply $200 of the salary, not more the first year. Br. Boyakin is poor, having probably expended almost all his means in reaching the field, seems

Portland.

desirous of trying

what he can do

in Portland

and

I

am

now

impressed favorably with the thought that the Lord has directed him in a very favorable time to his appropriate field

of labor.

He

is

calling a

good congregation to a school-house fitted up temporarily as a place of to the importance of the place, you

which the brethren have worship.

As

it

relates

hardly need any further information.

Portland

is

the principal

Oregon at present, numbering probably about 2000 with from 30 to 50 trading houses, wholesale and and must, for years at least, be the most commercial

port for souls, retail,

town are

in the Territory.

developed,

I

think

When the

the resources of the country commercial city of the

great

Columbia River will be somewhere below the mouth of the Willamette River, yet Portland will even then be an important a reference to the

of the surveyed parts of 14 miles above the mouth of Oregon, you the Willamette in the heart, or rather at the foot, of one of the most fertile portions of country in North America. Our point.

By

will see that

it

map

is

country is fast filling up and, although at present the influence of the Nebraska and Kansas movements may for two or three