CORRESPONDENCE 153
for the bare comforts of life. I know your Board cannot call in question our earnest desire to labor exclusively in the ap- propriate duties of a minister, but, if you will just advert to your books and count up the amount of remittances and then reflect that we have been already in the field two years, you will not wonder that we are compelled to be by far more secular than is desirable. I have received in these two years only about $70 from your Board. Could I have been in Illi- nois and received remittances quarterly, I should have been enabled to devote myself wholly to the work. These are unavoidable providences which will soon be succeeded by a direct and certain communication. I do not complain, but regret that your Board must be driven to the necessity of feeling that your missionaries are doing comparatively little in Oregon.
Anything that our brethren or sisters can send us as ar- ticles of clothing, and especially in cloth, either woolen or cotton, will greatly assist us. I shall make a request that you forward articles of clothing and common household fur- niture and books to the amount of my salary, or nearly so, up to this time the first opportunity after this. I have pur- posed to write you on the subject of the manners and cus- toms and the general character of the people and, from time to time, give a general description of the various detached portions of the country, and the present embarrassments which our colony have to encounter, but this I cannot do at this time. I will simply give my testimony in general terms to the climate. After having spent two years and a half below the Cascade Mountains, I think I have never ex- perienced so salubrious a climate, even in Vermont or Massa- chusetts, and never in my life have I seen so few persons suffering under the influence of disease, in proportion to the number of population. This remark holds emphatically true on the coast. Slight colds seem to be the only prevailing disease, except it be contagious diseases. The measles have prevailed among us this winter and have swept off a very
