Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/54



42 HOWARD MALCOLM BALLOU

proposed rather to send one of their native assistants to him.

This offer was accepted at a general meeting of the Oregon Mission held immediately after the arrival on Aug. 29, 1838, of the reinforcement consisting of Messrs. Walker, Eells, and Smith, as reported to the A. B. C. F. M. by Mr. Walker in a letter dated Weiletpoo, Oct. 15, 1838, when it was voted:

"That the Press, Printer, Type, Paper & binding Apparatus offered by the Sandwich Island mission, be accepted."

Mr. Edwin Oscar Hall, a printer, who had sailed from Bos- con Dec. 5, 1834, in the ship Hellespont, with the sixth re- inforcement to the mission, arriving in Honolulu June 6, 1835, had been stationed at the press in Honolulu, and it was finally decided that as the health of Mrs. Hall necessitated her tem- porary sojourn in a cooler climate, and Mr. Hall could well be spared for a while after the completion of the work then in hand, it would be best to send him to Oregon for a year to set up the printing establishment there and instruct those desig- nated to carry on the work.

Although mention is made in letters of manuscripts sent on by the Oregon mission, and, as stated above, it was voted to print them on the mission press, no record of any such print- ing can be found in the very exact record kept of all printing done by the Hawaiian Mission press.

The cut shown of the Spelling Book (see plate I) is from a proof discovered in Hilo, island of Hawaii, a few years ago by Rev. W. D. Westervelt, in the possession of Mrs. Mary T. C. Hitchcock, the daughter of Mr. S. N. Castle, the assistant secular superintendent of the Hawaiian Mission in 1839.

It can only be regarded as a printer's proof, however, as the two pages are printed side by side in the wrong position as regards each other, the title page being to the left, and, as will be quoted later, Rev. A. B. Smith writes : "Respecting the book sent to the Islands to be printed, it came back as it was sent."

In a letter to the secretary of the A. B. C. F. M. dated lam. 26. 1839. Mr. Hall writes from Honolulu:

"Mr. Spalding- has sent me a small elementary book in the Nez Perces language in order that I could see the proportions of the various letters in putting up the type. He says also, that