Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/109

Rh said that water power may be employed in these two places, enough to drive 700 or 1000 runs of stones the entire year. The country in the vicinity is becoming thickly populated for a new country. The number of communicants in the church in Rock Island is forty-three; and the average number of attendants at public worship is about sixty. The number of my family is six. It is desirable that my reappointment should commence at the expiration of the present appointment. Mount Pleasant church numbers—communicants and probably about fifty will be the average number of attendants. . . . We have other places of preaching through the week. The amount of salary necessary for the support of my family would not fall much short of four hundred dollars. The church in Rock Island will pledge one hundred and seventy-five dollars, and the Mount Pleasant church fifty dollars. If your Board will appropriate one hundred dollars to my support, I will try and supply the remaining deficiencies.

Rock Island is the seat of justice for the county and I am no enthusiast when I say it is destined in less than twenty years to be second to no other town on this river in Illinois. The water power will eventually line the whole bank of the river with mills from Molein [Moline] to this place, a distance of three miles, and also the entire east shore of the Island itself the same distance, which terminates opposite the upper part of this town, and, if necessary, half the water of the Mississippi may be employed in driving machinery at a comparatively small expense. No other Baptist church in the place. The other churches are a large Methodist church and a pretty able Presbyterian church for a new country.

The surrounding country along the river and for ten or twelve miles back is capable of sustaining a dense population, being more than ordinarily well supplied with timber, abounding in coal of a good quality, and is fast settling with eastern emigrants.