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CORRESPONDENCE 411

in deciphering these hieroglyphics. Our wagons are now un- dergoing repairs, having become shrunk almost beyond your conception by protracted and excessive heat from the sun and sand. Probably in two days we shall be on our line of march. As near as we can calculate, about 600 wagons are in advance of us and probably about 100 are behind us, and it will be almost a fair estimate to reckon 425 souls to every hundred

waggons. 87

Yours in haste,

EZRA FISHER.

N. B. Br. Johnson and family are with us and in good health. He requests me to say that as he is preparing a letter for the Cross and Journal and his time is all employed in that and the multiplied cares of the camp, he cannot write at this time. He sends his respects to yourself and Board.

Your, E. F.

Snake River, 7 miles above the Salmon Falls, Oregon Terri- tory, Sept. 12th, 1845.

Dear Br. Hill:

I this day am happy to meet Dr. White, 88 the Indian agent for Oregon, on his way to your city and Washington. It affords us peculiar pleasure to state to you and your Board that by the abounding grace of the All Wise God, Br. Johnson, myself and our families have been preserved through a fatiguing journey of about 2000 miles by ox team and that we are now in health and within about 670 miles of our journey's end. The fatigues of our journey perpetually press- ing upon us forbid our doing much directly by preaching the word of God, yet we hope soon to be placed where we may labor directly for the temporal and spiritual welfare of the new and rising colony with whom our interests are soon to

87 This estimate was apparently nearly correct. See note 83.

88 Elijah White, M. D., had arrived in Oregon in 1837 as a member of th Methodist mission. He was appointed United States sub-Indian agent for the Oregon Country in 1842. He was now on his way to Washington bearing to Congress a memorial of the Legislature of the Provisional Oregon Government, and on business concerning his office. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. I:iSS. 54, 481-6.