Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/129

 CORRESPONDENCE must wait

am much

till

in

after I

make my next

want of funds

Let the draft be drawn to

to

meet

me or

my

121

quarter's report, as I

forthcoming expenses.

order.

Respectfully yours,

EZRA FISHER. Oregon Rev. B. M.

City, July 3d, 1855.

Hill, Cor. Sec. Soc.

Dear Brother:

Our school affairs are moving along but slowly. Our community is so fluctuating, being subject to so many excitements and so many fluctuations, and so extreme, that it is next to impossible to keep any class of scholars above a few months, except a few from the more able permanent citizens. We have been suffering the last twelve months all the inconveniences of stagnation in business. 371 Farmers have wheat and beef and pork and butter in profusion, but it is hard to

Now convert their produce into cash or family supplies. New and rich gold another panic has struck the farmers. diggings are beginning to be worked high up the Columbia near Fort Colville. 372

This is drawing away the floating and some the farmers are leaving their standing of laborers, wheat for the mines. It has not yet been ascertained how extensive the gold field is on the Columbia, or how product-

notwithstanding the high waters, inexperienced miners, Frenchmen and half-breeds are said to wash from fifteen to twenty dollars per day with nothing but About $5000 worth of the gold has already reached pans. this place and is pronounced to be gold of the finest quality. With these and other and varied exciting causes moving upon the minds of a heterogenious community thrown together from every part of the globe, it is no strange thing that teachers ive

it

will prove, yet

371 These hard times are assigned by Bancroft to Indian disturbances, and to Business was prostrated in the falling off in the yield of the California mines. California. Hist, of Ore., 11:337of was in the and caused, as the author This discovery spring 1855 gold 372 Bancroft, Hist, of Wash., Idaho and indicates, the usual stampede to the diggings. 1 08. Mont., p.