Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/410



360 CHARLES HENRY CAREY

The William Hamilton arrived at New Bedford on the 14th of January, 1848; and Brother Gary and his wife reached New York on the 18th of the same month, after a very pleasant voyage of about six months from the mouth of the Columbia River. The day following that of his arrival, Brother Gary appeared before the Board and presented, in an address of more than two hours in length, a detailed and most satisfactory account of the manner in which he had fulfilled the responsible duties which had devolved on him as Superintendent of the mission, as also the present condition and prospects of our missionary work in that distant field. An outline of this address will furnish the latest and fullest intelligence from this mission and therefore present to the Society and its friends the most satisfactory report concerning it. We have availed ourselves of the copious notes taken by several competent brethren during its delivery, from which we have condensed the substance of his remarks.

On his arrival in Oregon, Brother Gary found the mission greatly and injuriously involved in secular busi- ness. The missionaries had not abandoned their proper calling, but so great was the number of secular men em- ployed in the mission, and such the extent of the mer- cantile, mechanical and agricultural operations connected with it, that it presented more the appearance of a design to establish a colony than of an associated effort to pro- mote true Christian evangelization. As might have been expected, so extensive a connection with secular matters had excited the suspicions of the new settlers, and preju- diced them to some extent, against the mission itself. Having fully satisfied himself of the true state of things, Brother Gary was not long in determining his course. He saw clearly, that however pure the motives of the projectors of this plan of operations may have been, and however useful the policies in the incipent state of the mission, the time had fully come when a change was ab- solutely necessary. He therefore, as soon as practicable,