of May. To their joy they soon afterward overtook, or were overtaken by Rev. Hezekiah Johnson and family from Iowa, whom they had expected to accompany them, but had given up. The two men had been closely associated in organizing the Baptist work in Iowa. At the solicitation of both, Hezekiah Johnson had also been appointed by the Home Mission Society a missionary to Oregon. A salary of three hundred dollars[1] for one year from the time of their arrival in Oregon had been advanced to each of them.
Like the rest of their company, the two missionaries and their families experienced none of the extreme sufferings which fell to the lot of many who travelled the Oregon Trail, and of some who that year departed from it. So far as known, the worst Indian depredation in the family of Ezra Fisher was the cutting off of the brass buttons on his son's roundabout. But there were trials in abundance and their share of the very real suffering and danger which were a part of crossing the plains to Oregon.
One of their trials was the disregard of the Sabbath, which they not only felt to be wrong, but which prevented their accomplishing as much in a religious way as they had hoped. Except in a genuine emergency, such as lack of water, or of feed for the cattle, on the Sundays when their company insisted upon travelling, the missionaries would tarry behind, have family devotions, rest and overtake the main company late in the evening.
About half of the Sabbaths were observed at least by halting. On these occasions, one of the three ministers of the company would preach, a wagon usually serving as a pulpit.
At The Dalles Ezra Fisher preached his first sermon in Oregon from John 3:16. Here the missionaries camped and built a flatboat. They were out of provisions and obliged to pay eight dollars per hundred pounds for flour and six dollars for beef. Dried salmon, bought of the Indians, was generally a substitute for the latter.
- ↑ See letter of March 22, 1845.
