CORRESPONDENCE 283
essential to a thorough education without directly inculcating their peculiar religious tenets. The influence of this sect is becoming strong in this territory. I am informed by indubit- able authority that there is not a place in the whole territory where the higher branches can be acquired except by a private teacher or in a Catholic school. We then need extremely a series of elementary books, geography, grammar, arithmetic, natural philosophy and other school books, but we have not the means of compensation except by exchanges. They would be purchased were they .here, if wheat would buy them. Can we not have them? Again we are in perishing need of juvenile reading such as the publications of the Am. Bap. Pub. Soc. and the religious periodicals of our denomination both for young and old. We are almost in a heathen land so far as relates to the circulation of religious intelligence, while there is a readiness and eagerness on the part of citizens generally to read anything late from the States. Some of our numerous brethren in New York and Boston could easily send to Br. Johnson and myself the files of their own religious periodicals, after reading, without increasing their expenses. I know of no country where religious tracts would be read with more interest than in Oregon. I know Br. J. M. Peck to be em- phatically a western pioneer, and through his influence and yours, may we not expect immediately an appropriation of the Am. Bap. Pub. Soc.'s publications for Oregon, a proportion of them advocating our denominational views and exhibiting the true character of popery ? Should a box of clothing be made up for the relief of our families, allow me to state that common calico, shirting, any woolen clothing either for men or women, or children between the size of infancy and manhood, shoes, half hose, or any articles of bedclothes would be very accept- able; our hats and shoes are literally worn out and Br. John- son's boys have been barefooted, and little girls, too, all winter, and mine are candidates for the same treatment unless we get returns from New York or supply them and varied other de- mands by the labor of our hands.
