commodious harbor. Were a trade carried on between this point and the East Indies, the perilous navigation of dangerous seas, to which our commerce with that quarter is unavoidably exposed, would be obviated. With a little energy and an inconsiderable expense, compared with the magnitude of the design, we can have the luxuries and richest products of the Oriental climes brought up the Oregon River, over the snowy heights of the Rocky Mountains, and poured out into the lap of the prosperous West.
Your petitioners feeling a lively interest in speedily securing so many important advantages for their country, therefore pray, that your honorable body will, by law, afford the necessary facilities as soon as practicable, to settle the Oregon Territory in the manner suggested in this petition.
H. Hough, Fielding Friend, Samuel Haycraft, J. R. Boyce, C. S. Craig, James W. Hays, F. W. Foreman, S. D. Winterbower, R. G. Hays, John H. Thomas, J. W. Miller, E. S. Brown, Nathaniel McLane, James W. Smith, E. H. Haycraft, P. S. Wood, Samuel J. Stuart, Wm. D. Vertrus, P. W. D. Stone, W. S. Morris, Thomas Morris, John Arnold, W. S. English, W. E. English, Stephen Eliot, Arthur Park, Wm. C. Van Mater.
Elizabethtown, Kentucky, January 13, 1840.
TALLMADGE B. WOOD LETTER.
The following letter, written by Tallmadge B. Wood, was secured through Miss Florence E. Baker, of the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Tallmadge B. Wood was without doubt the Benjamin Wood of whose murder by Indians in the California mines in 1848 Mrs. Fannie Clayton gives a circumstantial account in the June Quarterly, 1901, pages 180-181. As the letter and other evidence indicate, he was prominent in the direction of the emigration of 1843.
Miss Baker supplies the note below, descriptive of the letter; also the following facts: "Mr. Wood was born July 5, 1817, and was the son of Jesse and Rebecca (Bryan) Wood, and grandson of Benjamin Wood. They lived in the township of Milton, and their post office was Ballston Spa, Saratoga County, New York. His sister was Mrs. (Wood) Stinner, [?] who founded a seminary for young
