Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/84

76 the three families spent the remainder of the winter, all making the best of their cramped quarters.

Each morning the beds, which had been spread out on the puncheon floor, would be rolled up in the buffalo robes which had seen duty on the Plains. They did their cooking over the stick fireplace. This was simplified because of a lack of materials with which to cook. They were without flour, milk, butter or eggs, and their only meat was the game which they were able to kill. Boiled wheat, occasionally served with molasses, potatoes and dried-pea coffee, were their chief dependence. They had, besides, dried peas and turnips.

In the evening they would gather around the fireplace, seated, for the most part, on benches or blocks of wood and, by the light of a pitchy knot, Ezra Fisher would read the words for the children to spell. On Sunday evenings he would conduct a Bible class.

Upon his arrival at the home of David Lenox, he had at once united with the little church which had been organized the preceding year and of which Rev. Vincent Snelling, of the immigration of '44, was pastor. This was at West Union, six miles northeast of what is now Hillsboro. During the winter he provided for his family, travelled up and down the Valley, going nearly as far south as the Luckiamute River, acquainted himself with conditions and needs, and preached every Sunday but three.

In the spring, David Lenox moved his family into a new, hewed log cabin and Ezra Fisher's remained in the old. The following summer Ezra Fisher taught a term of school, kept up his preaching each Sabbath, superintended a Sunday school of twenty-five pupils, and, when Rev. Vincent Snelling moved to what is now Yamhill County, became pastor of the West Union Church. During the few months of his pastorate there were ten or twelve conversions.

Believing that near the mouth of the Columbia lay the point which would become of first commercial importance for Oregon, and that no other place except Oregon City was of