300 REVEREND EZRA FISHER
support. Were we to ask the Board for $600 salary, that would appear like an enormous expenditure in comparison to the relative results and importance of the field. We, there- fore, concluded that to abandon the field would be disastrous and our only alternative, in view of all circumstances, would be to practice economy, even to parsimony, and, while the country was new, to meet the necessities of our families, which remained unprovided for by the Board and our breth- ren and friends, by our own industry and that of our families till we could have time to correct false views in our brethren here and the age of the country would insure us entire sup- port. I know not how it has been with Br. Johnson, but I have never attempted to conceal from your Board the fact that sheer necessity impelled me to labor, working with my hands to supply my immediate wants. Had you forwarded to me the $200 in cash, that sum would not have bought $65 worth of clothing and groceries in N. Y. My only alterna- tive seemed to be to order goods for my family supplies. This process has taken from one to two or three years to get our returns. With this state of things I have been in- clined to wait with patience. Could we have received our pay from N. Y. at your prices at the end of each year, we might have been able to give ourselves mostly to the gospel ministry up to the time of the commencement of the gold excitement. Since that time changes have gone on with un- paralleled rapidity, till the time has now come when, instead of $200, it would require $1800 to $2000 to give my family a comfortable support at Oregon prices. Gold is found so abundant that our men will go and get it in preference to farming their rich lands, till potatoes are worth $5 per bushel and flour is from $25 to $30 per barrel, and all kinds of living extravagantly high. Gold is found on the Umpqua and Rogue rivers in Oregon, so that our men will probably mine near home next summer. 193 We therefore expect a great in-
193 Mining was just beginning in these valleys. The summer of 1850 saw two hundred miners at work in the Umpqua Valley, but the real boom came some time later. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. 11:184-186.
