Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/379



JONATHAN CARVER AND THE NAME OREGON 367 Page 82:

"One instance, among numbers, I am urged to communicate here, as death now equally precludes the power of bestowing, and the gratitude of acknowledging, future bounties : Captain Carver is a name known in the annals of misery, to which he was reduced by long-continued want ; disease, its natural con- sequence, gave him access to Dr. Fothergill ; and I am informed by his widow, that as often as he applied for medical relief, the doctor as often accompanied his prescription with a liberal donation. But Captain Carver was not an importunate solic- itor; the mind not hardened by familiarity of refusal, or that hath not acquired, by frequent struggles, the art of suppressing its emotions, possesses that diffidence which is the inseparable associate of worth. Between diffidence and want, many were the struggles of Captain Carver, but, overcome at length by repeated acts of the doctor's generosity, a jealous suspicion of becoming troublesome, to his benefactor, determined him to prefer that want, from the deprivation of the necessaries of life, which put it out of the power of his choice ; for death soon triumphs over famine. What a conflict of sullen greatness does this tragedy exhibit! When his fate was communicated to the doctor, how tender was his expression ! "If I had known his distress, he should not thus have died" !*

annuity. The unfortunate husband was only known to me on his deathbed. In the early stages of his disease he was able to wait upon Dr. Fothergill; but in the progress of it, being confined to his bed, the doctor requested me to visit the captain at his lodgings; and my first interview was within three days of his decease. It was after his funeral that I felt myself more immediately interested in the succorr of the widow and orphans. As the captain died pennyless, he was buried, to avoid expense, in the poor's ground, a part of the churchyard usually appropriated to the abject poor. When I reflected upon the utility of his Travels, I confided him as a public loss, and his offspring as the children of the public; and I presented the widow with a few pounds, to clothe and feed herself and children; but the money, thus designed to satisfy her hunger, she employed otherwise; she had the corpse of her husband taken out of the poor's ground, and buried in ground containing the ashes of higher company, arid over it she raised a decent monument to his memory. His Travels, however, will prove a more durable monument than stone; and, though the dust with which we are mixed avails not to the living or to the dead, yet I was sensibly touched with this instance of posthumous affection, and have since endeavored to mitigate the miseries of a mind endowed with such tender sensibilities.
 * The king has since graciously condescended to allow the widow Carver an