Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/284



276 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

hear from me again soon, if life is spared. The goods which you forwarded on the bark Undine were lost. You will probably draw to the amount on the insurance office and forward the same articles again.

I will here insert a small bill of articles which were over- looked in making out the bill forwarded you last month. I hope it will reach you before you fill that bill, that you may put them up together:

1 leather travelling trunk, 2 pairs small shoes for child 2 yrs. old, 1 coffee mill, lace for eight or ten ladies' caps, 2 pair of ladies' dark kid gloves, rather over medium size, 1 dress shawl, worsted, 1 Latin dictionary, 1 Virgil with clavis, 1 pair spectacles, for Mrs. Fisher, set in silver, 4 rolls of black quality binding about one inch wide.

N. B. Should this bill not reach you before you fill the bill last ordered, you will probably forward these articles with other articles which you may forward for the mission- aries.

P. S. I shall report up to the first of April in a few weeks and hope to be able soon to let you know the state of things in California. Br. Johnson writes me that probably nine-tenths of all the men in Oregon will go to the mines in California next summer. 1 ?? I think this a large estimate. Gold is found in small quantities in several places in Oregon, and the prospects are said to be most promising on the Santi Am River. Whether it will be found sufficiently abun- dant to justify working is yet uncertain. 1 ? 8 No doubt our government will order a geological and mineralogical sur- vey of California and Oregon Soon. 1 ?^ Such a work would greatly aid emigrants in deciding the place of their loca- tions. We need an unusual degree of grace to enable us to

177 The author was right. Probably about two-thirds of the young and mid- dle-aged men went. F. G. Young, Financial Hist, of Ore., in Ore. Hist. Soc. Quar. VII: 3 73.

178 Gold was already found in small quantities in the gravels on the Rogue River, and along the Willamette. George H. Himes.

179 This survey was not made, although it was later agitated, especially by a Mr. Evans. George H. Himes.