Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/87

Rh The goods from the Home Mission Society had been ordered from Tualatin Plains April 17, 1846, and were sent in response to the wish of Ezra Fisher that a large proportion of his salary each year should be spent in articles purchased in New York at the lower New York prices and forwarded by ship to Oregon. This method of remittance was satisfactory to both and became their practice. The salary of the two missionaries would appear to have been less than two hundred dollars each, as they received word in 1847 that it had been increased to that amount. They sometimes received donations from eastern churches and societies. These, however, were usually books and periodicals for general distribution.

Removing four miles farther south on Clatsop Plains, near what is now Gearhart, Ezra Fisher kept up his' appointments at the former place and began preaching on the alternate Sundays in his own home, a log cabin built by himself. In the fall, he made a four weeks' tour of the Willamette Valley, taking with him a supply of Bibles, Testaments and tracts which had been received with the goods from New York.

The third winter in Oregon was passed more pleasantly than the two which had preceded it. But life on Clatsop Plains in 1847 and 1848 was hardly modern. Around them, far more numerous than the white settlers, were the Clatsop Indians, and Chinook Jargon was in daily use. Ezra Fisher's cabin was lighted by a primitive lamp without a chimney and burned oil obtained by the Indians from a whale which had been cast ashore. The lamp was a luxury of his own family, most of their neighbors using a saucer or small bowl of oil or lard in which a twisted rag served for a wick. His home was swept by a hazel broom which he himself had made. Indian baskets were common receptacles and, except for wild cranberries raked from numerous bogs, the family fruit supply was the berries gathered in the summer and dried. Mrs. Fisher had a few cherished dried currants, which on rare occasions she would add to a pudding