Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/31

Rh handful of female immigrants landed upon your shores! My friend and myself, arriving in San Francisco in good health and high courage, were surprised to find persons commissioned by friends in the East to seek us immediately on the arrival of the Continental, render us all the services of which we stood in need. and. if our spirits were so crushed that we desired to return, secure a passage for us. We had just finished what we considered the happiest three mouths of our lives, and it would he difficult to depict our state of mind, on reading letters from our friends bewailing our hard fate and beholding the actual presence of their agents, whom we had never seen he fore, hut who evidently believed that we had been led by misrepresentation to take passage with a party of ignorant, vicious people, from whose presence we should fly as from a pestilence.

There was no end of testimony as to the dismal character of Washington Territory; the ignorance, coarseness and immorality of its people, and the impossibility of obtaining employment. It was added that the wrath of Washington Territory was such that Mr. Mercer's life was nearly in danger; that its people utterly repudiated the whole thing. One lady said in our presence: 'Of course, no respectable woman came on the Continental:' another assured us that we should never be respected on the Pacific Coast because we came in that disreputable ship. Friends assured us that Puget Sound was the last place in the world for women, and offered us all sorts of inducements to remain. Those who felt warranted by relationship positively vetoed leaving California. But Washington Territory had been the land of our dreams for many months. Many of us could not be satisfied until we had seen it, and we determined to go on. although our hopes were greatly depressed by such a mass of testimony.

Shade of Falstaff! How this world is given to lying! At the first sight of your beautiful little village my spirits began to revive. The line structure occupying so grand a site, and devoted to education is not. I reflected, a bad commentary on the smaller houses below.

I now believe that only the most conscientious determination not to awaken hopes that would not be realized has led