Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/315



CORRESPONDENCE 289

Oregon City, Oregon Territory, Aug. 15th, 1846. Dear Br. Hill:

I am at this time on a visit to this place with Mrs. Fisher and to spend the Sabbath, and have just learned that Mr. Stark, supercargo of the Tulon, 104 leaves this place on Monday morning, and I have but an hour to write and that too in a visiting circle. I have many things to write which I intend to do before winter, but must dispense with order at this time. We are all in tolerable health and presume Br. Johnson's family are, although we have not yet seen them since coming in town. You can have but little conception of our feelings at the present. We find Oregon emphatically presenting a most interesting field for missionary labor, but quite dissimilar to any we have formerly occupied, and our circumstances wide- ly different. I wish you to be assured that we are not at all inclined to complain of the allotments of Providence. They are all in mercy. And it becomes us to rejoice that we may endure hardness for the cause of Christ so long as duty and necessity demand it. But rest assured, dear brother, I tell you the sentiments of my inmost soul when I say I have no desire to become secular when I see a civilized nation (shall I say) bursting into existence on the dark side of the globe, with a character entirely unformed and less elevated than that of Iowa or Missouri, and removed thousands of miles from the moral and religious influence of old and established institu- tions of morality and religion. Your means of communication are easy and direct throughout the entire states and territories drained by the waters of the Mississippi, and even through Texas ; but here we are, separated by great mountain and desert barriers, or a voyage of more than 20,000 miles by sea, sur- rounded by heathen near at hand, by Romans all along the southern coast line, with the isles of the sea waiting for the law of God and some in the very act of receiving it. What can be done must be done or our opportunities for doing as

104 The "Toulon," Captain Nathaniel Crosby, first cime to Oregon from New York in 1845. For a number of years beginning with 1846 it made trips from Oregon to the Hawaiian Islands. Benjamin Stark, Jr., was supercargo. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. II:i6, 48,