Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/303

297 a beautiful shot with the rifle, nearly as successful as myself! And I do assure you, from my heart, it is a terrible pleasure to me thus to meet a really good man, and one with whom I can talk of plants.

, Oct. 23, 1832. Your truly welcome and highly-prized letter of Oct. 10, 1830, I had the pleasure to receive from Capt. Charlton, our Consul at Sandwich Islands, on my arrival at that place from the coast of California in August last. I esteem this mark of your regard as not the least of the many favours you have shown me. It affords me sincere delight to hear of the health of your family, and the great progress you have made in your publications, the improvement of the apartments in which you keep your collections, and the prodigious increase of your Herbarium. I carry your letter about in my notebook, and when on my walks by the side of some solitary creek, the idea not unfrequently occurs to me, that I may have overlooked some part of it, out comes your epistle for another perusal. Letters are, indeed, rare things to me in this part of the world.

I have had no opportunity of writing to you since last year by any conveyance that might be considered safe. I did so from Montérey, in Upper California, in October, 1831, and sent it by way of Mexico, under the care of our Consul at the port of San Bias; there I detailed to you the extent of my travels in that territory, and the progress of my collections, as well as gave you a brief notice of the country. This letter I hope you would receive about New Year's Day 1832. The Hudson Bay Company's vessel did not arrive on the coast of California in November, as had been expected, which, in some measure, frustrated my projects. No opportunity having offered for proceeding, either to the Columbia or the Sandwich Islands in the winter or spring of last year. I continueed to consider California as still new to me, and set to work a second time finding new plants, and drying better specimens of those which I formerly possessed. I think that I added not less than one hundred and fifty undescribed species this year, including some new genera, which will bring up the entire amount of flowering plants to scarcely less than seven thousand distinct species. I might have effected more; but being in constant dread of a vessel arriving, and sailing without me, I could not venture to be absent more than fifteen or twenty days at a time from the coast; however, as I did my best, I try to feel content.