resulted in the loss or destruction of most of such manuscripts.
Of the early Oregon papers, I doubt if more than two or three perfect files exist. Of the early papers of Washington, not more than three or four complete files remain of any of them. Of the first Seattle papers, there is but one file. It I began collecting more than forty years ago. How much care, then, should be exercised in gathering these old papers from the garrets and the closets where they have lain fifty years or more, perhaps—as well as to observe the most painstaking care for their preservation.
When the missions among the Indians of Oregon were established by Messrs. Whitman and Spalding in 1836, the First Native Church of Honolulu decided to send to it a small printing press and some type and material that had been in use for some time there in printing spelling books and religious matter, thinking the work of the mission in Oregon would be advanced by its aid.
Edwin O. Hall had been one of the printers of the Honolulu mission and he was engaged to accompany the printing outfit to Oregon. With the press, type, fixtures, a stock of paper and binding apparatus in his charge he, accompanied by his wife, arrived at Vancouver, on the Columbia River, early in the month of April, 1839. In a few days the press and party started up the Columbia River in a canoe and reached Wallula on the 30th. From there the press was sent on pack animals to Lapwai, on the Clearwater River, not far from the present City of Lewiston, Idaho, while the rest of the outfit and the party went on up the river by canoe.
May 18, 1839, the first proof sheet in the original Oregon Territory was struck off amid great rejoicing among the missionary party. A large number of publications in the Flathead, Spokane, Cayuse, and Nez Percé lan-
