Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/305

Rh gradually yielding. On our arrival, although we were greeted with kindness by the few brethren we met, we did not find our lot cast in the midst of wealthy churches who were participating in the fruits of centuries of labours in civilization and Christianity. We were, however, kindly received into the cabin of Br. Lenox where we have resided up to the present, and, although his house contains but one room, about 18 feet by 22, without a single pane of glass, and his family consists of 13 souls, besides, almost every night, one, two or three travelers, and my family consists of six souls, we have passed the winter thus far quite as pleasantly as you would imagine in view of the circumstances, and probably more so than a large portion of the last emigration, although perhaps a little more straitened for room.

With the exception of the last two weeks, our health, as a family, has been very good since our arrival. . . . The amount of ministerial labor that I have been able to perform since our arrival would seem to a minister in the eastern or middle states to be trifling indeed. But were you in an entirely new country not reclaimed from the savages, with only one settler on each mile square and that only in the open plains, in the dead of winter, with the rains almost daily falling till all the small streams are swollen to swimming, and numbers of bridges, of which there are as yet but few, swept away, with all the cares of a family to be met, after eight months' consumption of provisions and clothing where supplies are to be procured at distances of from ten to thirty miles, it will appear less strange. I have visited but little, have preached every Sabbath but three, and then my place was supplied by others, except once when journeying, the rains and the distance from neighbors prevented. Yet I am almost daily