Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/302



294 REVEREND EZRA FISHEZ

family. We have just learned: that the site on which we have fixed for the location of our institution is not vacant and we have concluded to spend the winter in this place. I shall open a school here within a few days and preach in this place and the adjoining towns on Sabbaths. I think it rather probable the result will be that we shall finallv locate our school in the immediate vicinity of this city. Public sentiment of our wiser brethren seems to be setting- strongly this way. By the opening of the spring the question will be decided whether we locate permanently at this place or in the center of the Willamette Valley. We hope to be able to buy the lands and erect the first temporary buildings and perhaps support our first teacher without calling on the lib- erality of our eastern brethren directly for funds. But we must look to you for a competent teacher qualified to teach the Latin and Greek languages, natural science and mathe- matics, and it will be very desirable if he could teach music Money is plentiful^ in this country and education is held in popular favor. Our plan will be to find some Baptist friends who will buy and hold a claim of 640 acres and donate a por- tion of it for a site now while land is cheap. Will you find us a teacher and send him to our assistance as soon as a properly qualified one can be obtained? My removal from the mouth of the Columbia renders it important that your Board find a young man of talent and appoint him to labor at Astoria and Clatsop Plains. A man is also much needed in the church in Tualatin Plains. The church in that place will supply a minister's table from the first and the place is important in location. I shall report at the expiration of this quarter for all the time I have served as missionary since I returned from California, but I shall forward you a portion of my journal the next mail.

I am much interested in the private letter. Almost all ar- ticles of drygoods sell at from 100 to 300 or 400 per cent ad-

190 The increase in the supply of money in Oregon was, of course, the result of the California mines. Some gold was coined in Oregon City, and Mexican and Peruvian silver dollars had come in large quantities. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore.