Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/312



286 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

In truth the door is fast opening for business men on the coast as well as in the interior, and the facilities for emigrating from the eastern states are about as good, if not better, by water than by land. Five hundred dollars invested in clothing or mechanics' tools in New York or Boston is better than the same amount in cattle and wagons in Missouri, and then emi- grants might sail in the fall and arrive in the spring in time to make a crop.

You can forward any papers or boxes from New York or Boston or other port by any ship bound to the mouth of the Columbia. The firm of Gushing, Newberry Port, will prob- ably send out one vessel each year. 101 The firm of A. G. & A. W. Benson, No 19 Old Slip, New York, will probably send one vessel each six months. Should you send by any vessel directed to either Br. Johnson or myself, Oregon City, Oregon Territory, to the care of E. O. Hall, Financier of the A. B. C. F. M., Honolulu, Oahu Island, and pay the freight, he will for- ward such packages or boxes to us. Yours, &c.,

EZRA FISHER.

N. B. : It is due to Br. Johnson to state that his family has suffered much with the camp fever 102 since their arrival in this place, but through a kind Providence their lives are all spared and their health is gradually returning. Sister J. is beginning to take the charge of the family. We design fixing our fam- ilies near this place the coming season, sustaining preaching regularly each Sabbath, traveling as much as we can and searching out the scattered sheep.

Tuallity Plains, Tuallity Co., Oregon, April 17, 1846. Dear Br. Hill:

I have just learned that the return party to the States will leave Oregon City on Monday. It is now late at night, and

1 01 F. W. 'Pettygrove, at Oregon City, had come out as agent of A. G. and A. W. Benson in 1842. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. 1:422. The firm of John and Caleb Gushing of Newburyport had sent a ship to Oregon as early as 1839 (it arrived in 1840) and in 1846 another of their ships appeared in Oregon. H. W. Scott (ed), Hist, of Portland, p. 86.

102 Camp fever was much like dysentery or typhoid fever. It was sometimes called mountain fever. Geo. H. Himes.