Vancouver’s Island April 18th (57?)

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Brother George

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Again I will attempt to write to you after quite a long interval. My opportunities for writing are so very unfavourable that it is impossible for me to keep anything like a regular correspondence with anyone.

My general health has been good since last I wrote you but my business has not been flourishing. The money I had and which I wished to send home is spent and God knows whether it will ever come back again. I missed it in buying property among these old country people because their prejudices towards Americans are so strong that they can never be banished and let an American’s principles be ever so good and his character be established for ever so long and yet there is a suspicion or a sort of envy towards him which never wears away.

The climate here is agreeable and in many respects I am pleased with the country and probably should I return to the States I should be more discontented and enjoy myself less than I do here. But there is no society here such as I’ve been in the habit of mingling in and no means of information and there is no endeavour among the people to excel in general knowledge - no study of the sciences, no lectures on morality, drinking and playing cards is the only pastime.

I’m doing a little work for myself now which will last me a month or so after which I intend to go to some place on the other side of the Sound where wages are better than here.

This however will be my post office address until otherwise instructed. I receive the Tribune as regular as I can any paper from the Atlantic States and I’m extremely thankful to you for the favour and will repay you for all your expenses when opportunity favours. I can’t send any money to Lucius now but when the volunteers receive their pay for their services I expect some money and if possible I will try to send some home then. I don’t expect I shall be able to send a draft to be cashed in New York by any Commercial Company here for I doubt they have no business transactions with any mercantile houses in the States.

You advise me by all means not to engage in the wars with the savages. If I was living on the American soil and Volunteers were called for I should feel it to be my duty to engage in the service.

The war is which the people of Washington and Oregon Territory were engaged was one into which they were forced in order to defend themselves against the murderous and bloody cruelties of their savage foes. It was one in which they were contending for the privileges of life and security and not for gains.

I think in my last letter I brought my narrative down to the time I arrived at the Dalles of the Columbia on the first day of Sept 1852. Here Parsons took charge of our horses and I travelled down the Columbia by water.

The rainy season was now just setting in and being in an open boat and encamping upon the bank by night we were much exposed to the weather. I arrived at Portland, the largest town in Oregon, on the evening of the 9th Sept. Having heard very favourable reports of the country about Puget Sound, myself with four of my companions across the Plains set out on the 16th for Olympia. Portland is situate on the West bank of the Willamette about twelve miles from its junction with the Columbia.

On the evening of the 16th we reached the South bank of the Columbia where we stopped for the night, sleeping in the open air, making down our beds alongside of a fence and here we fell in company with two men who had come through by land from California and were on their way to Puget Sound like ourselves and they loaned us two mules and a Spanish Horse to assist us in carrying our clothes, Blankets, and provisions as we had determined to leave our horses on the Columbia to recruit as they were very poor in flesh. Here also we met with Parsons who had been sick and had given up the horses to another of our company and had himself gone down in a boat but he thought he was now recovering and had engaged to teach a school here through the winter. I left with him the Papers in regard to our horses and waggon so that he might get them and dispose of them in the most advantageous manner possible.

On the 17th we crossed the Columbia and reached Olympia situate at the head of Puget Sound and then a small town of something like a score of shabby shabby looking Houses on the 24th. From the time of our leaving Portland we had slept under a roof but a part of a single night. For the rest of the time the ground was our bed and the sky our covering. On the 20th we went on board a small schooner and landed at Port Townsend after four days sailing. Here I was taken sick on the 4th day of Oct. My disease seemed like a violent fever at first but settled into the ague and fever after about a week’s time. During this time suffered severely as I was lying in an open log shanty and the cold chill winds of October were blowing off the Bay through the chinks of my cabin and fairly lifting the Blankets from off me whilst the violent burning fever in my brain deprived me of reason of times and it seemed as if my days were numbered and well nigh finished. After a week or so I began to have the chills and fever and now I was not in so violent Pain as before and there were intervals between the shakes when I was comparatively free from pain but I had no strength and I could eat nothing and the diarhea took hold of me which no medicine I could get would stop. This held me for a week or more till I became so weak and emaciated that my life seemed not worth an effort to save it. I got some medicine, I got a shelter and recovered but slowly. I left Port Townsend the 21st Jan seven or eight dollars in debt. I had labored some and nearly paid my way.

 

(remainder missing)