Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/600

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which resulted in the above selection of Mr. Richmond. And after the reader has stopped to think of all the missionaries sent out to Oregon, he will conclude that Oregon was considered by the eastern people to be a very dark corner of the earth, if not worse. But the following little poem, composed and read at that first meeting in New York by the poet, Martin Tupper, is well calculated to make the Oregon pioneers feel kindly towards their old friends in Gotham.

Mr. Richmond describes his first service in Portland as follows :

"Portland, Oregon, June 29, 1851.

"We had services in our own place, for the first time this morning. The use of the public school house has been granted us. There was one female present, and her little daughter and about twenty men. The services at night were at- ^ tended by about thirty men, no female. Most of the few men who will attend I our services here, are without their families, or are single men. There is a constant change in the population, and, I suppose, in the congregations. The Methodist clergyman has about fifty communicants ; and the Congregationalists whose house of worship has just been completed and opened for two Sundays, has ten communicants."

Thomas Fielding Scott was the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal church, sent to Portland and Oregon. His diocese embraced the territory of Oregon,