Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/176



168 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

Clatsop Plains, Oregon Ter., Feb. 3d, 1849.

Rev. Benj. M. Hill. Dear Brother:

I closed my last yesterday on the subject of California and will continue to remark. I understand by Capt. of the Undine that Mr. Hunt, a Presbyterian minister, is preaching at San Francisco. 153 Besides these two, I think there is not a Protestant preacher in Upper California. In view of the extraordinary evolution of things in Oregon and the vast in- flux of population in California and the fact that a large por- tion of our Baptist brethren of Oregon will be at the mines throughout most of the summer, and in view of the strong solicitude of our members in Clatsop about to move to Cali- fornia that I should visit that territory at least next summer, and the advice of all the members of the church, and in view of the loss of the goods shipped on board the bark Undine the 21st of June, 1848, I have thought it might be my duty to visit the mines the coming spring and dig long enough to raise means to pay my passage and meet the present press- ing wants of my family, spend a few weeks in the American settlements and towns and return home perhaps in July or August. I do not know but this course may be regarded by your Board as outstepping the bounds of your instructions, but I feel a strong conviction that great and sudden and un- expected changes justify extraordinary action. I do not know that I have the first desire to dig in the mines one day and, if I could leave my family comfortable and go by water to San Francisco and other towns on the Bay and the mines, with no other care than that for God's glory on the Pacific Coast, my care would be greatly relieved. But I have not the means, and I cannot leave that interest without being able to make known the wants of that rapidly accumulating mass to your Board. I will keep an account of the amount of time lost in traveling and digging, if any, and report to

153 This was Thomas Dwight Hunt, of Honolulu, a Congregationalist. Ban- croft, Hist, of Calif. VII 1727. Several clergymen came in February, 1840. Ibid.