Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/64

 Clatsop Plains, Clatsop County, Ore., July 23, 1847.

Dear Brother Hill:

Your favors of October 26th and November 13th were received June the 20th, and read with great pleasure, they being the first communications I have received from your pen since I left Rock Island, Ill., although I have written about half a quire of paper to you. One letter, however, of yours reached Oregon City; but our letters are all forwarded by private conveyance, and it was lost. It was the one which came on board the Brig Henry, Captain Kilburn, from Newberryport. The pamphlets and papers, which were sent on board that ship, were also lost. But Brother Johnson received his letter sent at the same time. The boxes of goods which you forwarded on board the Bark Whiton, Captain Geleston, will probably be here in two or three weeks, and will be very gladly received, as we are brought to rather straitened circumstances. In view of the small number of inhabitants at Astoria and the difficulty of sustaining my family there, we moved to these plains (Clatsop) about the first of May last. This I did by the advice of our Baptist friends in the Territory. Yet here we are compelled to devote most of the week providing the bread that perishes. Yet I think our position is as favorable to the promotion of the cause of truth as any I could have taken in Oregon after the one which Brother Johnson occupies. The future commerce of the country must pass within a few miles of us, and we feel strongly confident that a port of entry will be established near the mouth of this majestic Columbia, and other public works must necessarily go forward in our county as soon as we have a territorial government organized by the United States Congress. At present we have but a small population in this county. In view of the time being so near at hand when this must probably become a command-