Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/293

 (McBean) sent his interpreter and another man to the mission. As the two messengers had to travel twenty-five miles to the mission and the same distance back again. Mr. McBean's letter must have been written late on Tuesday night: and the messenger he sent to Vancouver must have left on Wednesday morning. December 1. This messenger must have traveled the one hundred and forty miles from Walla Walla to the Dalles on one horse, and could not have reached there before late on Friday, December 3. To do this he would have to travel about forty-six miles a day. To go from the Dalles to Vancouver in a canoe, and be "wind-bound" at Cape Horn (as Mr. Gray states on page 517), in much less time than three days, would be very difficult indeed. No one knew any better than Mr. Gray the distance traveled, and the time it would occupy under the then existing circumstances.

The historian, on page 535, gives the communication of Governor Abernethy to the legislative assembly of Oregon, dated December 8. 1847. How. then, could Mr. Hinman be at Vancouver on Saturday, December 4, 1847! And. had he written his letter there on that day. why did it not reach Governor Abernethy two or three days in advance of that of Mr. Douglas, dated December 7? But there is on the face of Mr. Hinman's letter itself conclusive evidence that his date, as given, is an error. He says: "A Frenchman from Walla Walla arrived at my place on last Saturday." Now, if his letter had been correctly dated December 4, 1847, then the "last Saturday" mentioned would have been November 27, two days before the massacre took place. It seems plain that Mr. Hinman and the Frenchman arrived at Vancouver Monday evening, December 6, and that Mr. Hinman wrote his letter that evening, and Mr. Douglas his the next day, as he states. Upon this supposition Mr. I tinman could correctly say, "the horrible massacre that took place at Wailatpu last Monday." It may be that the figure 6 in Mr. Hinman's letter was mistaken for the figure 4; or it may have been a typographical error in publishing the letter; or Mr. Hinman.