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326 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

California are, many of them, turning their course to the Willamette Valley and others to the Puget Sound. 221 Im- migrants are now daily arriving, and every vessel and steam- er from California is bringing the disappointed miners ; it is confidently expected that we shall have our population more than doubled before next April. Your Board will soon see the necessity of making special effort for Oregon, as well as California. I often feel almost worn out in the multiplici- ty of my labors, yet I have never felt more the importance of working while the lamp burns and throwing all over into the hands of the Lord than I have the past summer. God has wonderfully blessed my poor frail body with strength We are now out of school books. Will you not induce some friend of youthful education in Oregon to raise some school books Saunders' series, or Angel's, if better; Thompson's arithmetic; a few grammars and books of philosophy, his- tory and astronomy, adapted to academies and have them shipped? Could not a society of young men be formed in your city who will furnish us with books as we may order them, so that we might have time to sell them and refund the money, with profit enough to pay them for the labor? There are now no school books or singing books suited to teach church music in Oregon. Do think of us. Respectfully and affectionately yours,

EZRA FISHER. Received Nov. 14, 1850.

Oregon City, Oregon Ten, Oct. 1, 1850. The Rev. Benj. M. Hill,

Cor. Sec. Am. Bap. Home Miss. Soc. :

Herein I send you my report of labor under the appoint- ment of the Home Mission Society for the second quarter (under the commission bearing date April 1, 1850) ending Oc- tober 1st, 1850. I statedly supplied the station in this place

221 The first American settlement in the Puget Sound country was in 1845. By 1850 there were possibly one hundred American citizens in that region; and trade had just begun in American bottoms. The Hudson Bay Company had, of course, some in some years before the Americans. Bancroft, Hist, of Washington, Idaho and Montana, pp. 2-17.