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do not unite, your force can hold Waiilatpu until we get assistance from California. I think the Henry, Captain Kilborne, will be there in ten days from this, and I hope w r e shall immediately get aid. Please present my thanks to the officers and men under your com mand. I will add there is now one hundred barrels of flour at the Cascades and Dalles. Captain Garrison was instructed to remain with his company at The Dalles.
I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
GEORGE ABEBNETHY, Col. C. Gilliam, Governor of Oregon Territory.
First Regiment Oregon Riflemen, Waiilatpu.
Events had transpired since the governor s declaration that no more men could be enlisted without calling an extra session of the legislature, which made it imperative, if the war was carried on, that more companies should be raised, and that without loss of time.
Meanwhile the army was in a sorry condition. Captain Maxon, immediately on arriving at The Dalles, where he found a reenforcement of one company only, under Joseph M. Garrison, sent his report below to the adjutant- general. He reminded that officer that there remained at Fort Waters, which was an enclosure of but a few feet in height, only one hundred and fifty men, almost without clothing or ammunition, and wholly without bread. He appealed to fathers to send bread to their sons, who were keeping danger away from their hearthstones; to mothers to pro vide clothing to protect their children from the winter blasts; to young women to frown upon every young man who refused to volunteer to defend their honor and their common country, and to every one to hasten the supplies for which he was waiting at Fort Lee.
This picture of destitution, which was true in every particular when Gilliam set out for The Dalles, was, at the time Maxon s report was written, considerably ameliorated, as appears from a letter by Jesse Cad waller, a private in Thompson s company, on the fourth of April, and before the news of the colonel s death had reached Fort Waters; for this correspondent says that thirty bushels of wheat, besides peas and potatoes, had been found, and the mill
