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 having intercourse with citizens from various parts of the country and, through that means, hope the way is opening for more extended labors in the opening of the spring, which is now beginning to make its appearance. I have established an evening spelling school for children of the family and one of the neighbors and a Bible class on Sabbath evenings in the same families. About twelve children attend regularly....

As it relates to my views of the importance of the field we are now just entering, I am by no means discouraged, but on the whole have a growing conviction that I never in my life was placed in a more responsible relation ; yet at the same time I feel borne down with the surrounding and opponent obstacles to extended usefulness. If you will not regard me desponding, I will name a few of them: First, we have but one church in Oregon and only two of the members living within 25 miles of the place so that all efficiency by church organization is lost, and those that have emigrated the past season are generally poor and but just able to provide for their immediate wants. The forty or fifty Baptist members are scattered over an extent of country, perhaps 90 miles in length and 50 in breadth. Again, we are destitute of juvenile books and periodicals, and books peculiar to the wants of our denomination. And then, the settlements are fast extending south and west and north- west to points which soon must rise to very considerable importance, and here are Br. Johnson and myself, with exhausted funds and beyond the reach of your aid for more than a year (and we must necessarily apply ourselves in part to procuring the means of present sustenance), with the labor of five or six men before us in the ministry, and that, too, at a time which most of all is the most favorable to give permanence and character to a rising nation. Do you ask how our means are exhausted so soon? We answer that when we arrived at The Dalles exhausted of provisions, we paid $8 per hundred for flour and $6 for beef; at the Cascades, from $6 to $10 for