Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/110

 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

102

Here I found the next trip of the boat. and twenty Baptist members, including- an aged minister (Br. Bond), with an enfeebled wife for many several days

between

till

fifteen

They are scattered mostly confined to her bed. a fertile, timbered, undulating country eight or ten through miles from north to south and perhaps half that distance from east to west. Br. Bond is preaching- what he can while years

laboring with all his powers to obtain a comfortable support for himself and helpless family. These brethren occupy prospectively one of the most important country positions in all Oregon, but at present they have to contend with all the

inconveniences of removing forests of enormous growth before they can reap a harvest from their generous soil. However, 1

they will soon be placed above want and probably abound in church will be constituted here in the farmer's wealth.

A

the coming- spring,

ing than

money The

many

if

not before.

This point

fields in the Mississippi

is

more promis-

Valley where labor and

are expended

by missionary societies. I took the steamer and visited The week following a town with site, Cascades, eight or ten families scattered on the north bank of the Columbia for a distance of three miles from the head

to the foot of the Cascade Falls, about

midway

of the Cascade Mountains, from east to west. These families have resorted here for matters of speculation and, with few exceptions, manifest less desire for the bread of eternal life

mammon of unrighteousness. This is the great natural gateway through the Cascade Mountains and must at no distant day become a place of great commercial and manufacturing importance, it being the head of ship navigation to than for the

the Columbia and there being a vast region of the best grazing country in North America on the Columbia and its hundred

which must soon be put in requisition to graze the and cattle horses of Oregon and Washington territories. Occasionally through the summer a Methodist circuit preacher has visited and preached in this place. Here I found one pious Methodist sister and one or two Campbellite members. The country on the north bank of the Columbia is now settled tributaries,