Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/178



Correspondence to the New York Spectator which describes Doctor Whitman as a passenger on board the steamer Narraganset on Long Island Sound. Doctor Whitman is on his way from New York to Boston.

We were most agreeably surprised yesterday by a call from Doctor Whitman from Oregon, a member of the American Presbyterian Mission in that territory. A slight glance at him when he entered our office would convince any one that he had seen all the hardships of a life in the wilderness. He was dressed in an old fur cap, that appeared to have seen some ten years' service, faded, and nearly destitute of fur; a vest whose natural color had long since faded, and a shirt—we could not see that he had any—an overcoat, every thread of which could be easily seen, buckskin pants, etc.—the roughest man we have seen this many a day—too poor, in fact, to get any better wardrobe. The doctor is one of those daring and good men who went to Oregon some ten years ago to teach the Indians religion, agriculture, letters, etc. A noble pioneer we judge him to be, a man fitted to be chief in rearing a moral empire among the wild men of the wilderness. We did not learn what success the worthy man had in leading the Indians to embrace the Christian faith, but he very modestly remarked that many of them had begun to cultivate the earth and raise cattle.

He brings information that the settlers on the Willamette are doing well; that the Americans are building a town at the Falls of the Willamette; that a Mr. Moore of Mr. Farnham's party, some sixty years of age, was occupying one side of the Falls, in the hope that [the] government would make him wealthy by the passage of a preëmption law; that the old man Blair, another member of the same party, was living comfortably a short distance above, as all who have read Mr. Farnham's travels will know that he deserves to do. Doctor Whitman left Oregon six months ago; ascended the banks of the Snake or Laptin River to Fort Hall, and was piloted thence to Santa Fé by the way of the Soda Springs, Brown's Hole, the Wina, and the waters of the del Norte. From Santa Fé he came through the Indians that have been