Fort Victoria Vancouver’s Island April 30th 1853?

 

Dear Brother Lucius

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It is only within a few days that I have received letters from home. It is only now that I have learned with any certainty that I can communicate with friends. The letters I have hitherto written have only been mere scrawls hurriedly written merely as experiments if by chance they might reach that far away home and those friends I love. But now within two weeks I have received five letters. One from home, one from Ade, one from Mary, one from brother George and one from George Reynolds. I have also learned that several letters directed to, have been forwarded from, Olympia to the dead letter office at Washington and in all probability all or nearly all the letters you have written have reached the office whither directed. I have never been able personally to enquire for letters either at Olympia or San Francisco but have sent by men with whom I was acquainted, to both places. Probably they never took pains to enquire. You can trust no one in this country. They will promise but it depends on their own interest whether they perform. I thought strange that I did not get letters here for it has been a year since I first wrote from the island but your not getting my letters accounts for that. I shall in future entrust my letters to more careful hands. I’ve not hitherto written to you for I knew not where you was. But now I learn that you are at home and also that you are endeavouring to purchase that loved homestead which becomes the more dear to one the longer he is absent from it. I hope you may succeed and if it is in my power will lend you aid. If I can dispose of my property here without loss I think I can spare you before winter five or six hundred dollars. If I go to California then I can easily remit it to you. But don’t put too much confidence in it for I may be disappointed and in that case disappoint you. But this I promise you that if I can come to proper arrangements in regard to affairs here I will go to San Francisco though I do not remain there and send aid if you desire it. Write to me immediately and let me know the exact circumstances in which you are placed. Lucius, if I have not seen the elephant since I left home I have at least seen his tracks. I have often wished you was with me for if I’d had a brother or one who would act a brother’s part with me I had done much better and been subject to far less annoyances. As it is I have been obliged to connect myself in business with such as are not men. And I’ll assure you such connections have rendered me supremely wretched. When I’m again free I shall act differently. I shall hereafter at least be master of my own earnings and lord in my own house.

In my moments of sober thought and calm reasoning however, I have always blessed my maker that none for whom I have any attachment or affection was subject to the privations inseparable from this wild region. If I could have been contented to remain near home it had been well. If when I was in the valley of the father of waters I had fixed my residence there it had been better than to remain here. But in my folly I chose to journey to the far far west. I can’t think of returning and commencing anew the world there. When I crossed the Missouri and the desert regions beyond, the Rubicon4 was passed and now on the Pacific’s shores I must yet awhile await my destiny. Could I occasionally visit the grey cottage among the apple trees and talk with its inmates there I should be comparatively content. But in imagination alone I must visit it and by letter converse. I know well that none has so kind and good friends as I although I’m debarred the joys of their presence.

I shall by and by write to some of you an account of the most important incidents in my travels and also the condition of society here and the appearance and resources of the country. But this must be deferred till I have a nice little cottage of my own. Till I have quiet, till I can retire from the presence of uncongenial associates and collect my scattered and wandering thoughts. My next letter home shall be to Elvira, and I will endeavour to write in a month or so. I wish she could be with me for a year, but it cannot be I suppose. If you see George Reynolds I wish you would tell him I received his kind letter and it shall be answered soon, that I’m only waiting for leisure that I may write a more worthy letter to an honored friend. O! you don’t know the pleasures, the blessings and the comforts of civilised life, the society of kind parents, sisters, brothers until you have wandered as I like a lone bird around strange nests, among the red savages of the wild and those fallen ones of our own hue, more criminal still. Buffeted by fortune in every way. At one time sick and helpless and unassisted, lying on a wretched bed of rushes in a wretched hovel with the cold winter blasts from the sea blowing the covering from your emaciated, feverish and almost helpless limbs. At another time sitting through the long night under a hawthorn with the rain and sleet freezing fast to your hair and clothing. Alone, far away from assistance, the grizzly bear and the savage prowling around, sleeping upon the damp earth, a stone for a pillow, and oftimes the rain pattering in your face. Again for near a month tossed upon the billows of the wide Pacific. No land in view and all that time dying with seasickness. Then in the thick forests of the Pacific’s isles chopping, hewing and hauling timber, early and late, wet by night by the dews of heaven and by day in surf of the foaming beach. And now again upon a small schooner’s deck, broken of rest and shivering with cold, watching through the dark night lest she run on rocks or shoals or capsize by the violence or caprice of the winds. Your breast filled with anxiety, your heart with care and your head bursting with pain. And at home, your wretched home, all pleasure banished by the presence of low bred associates whose habits, manners and conversation disgust you. All this and more I’ve experienced, do yet experience, but in one respect my decision is made and like the laws of the “Medes and Persians which alter not” will be put in execution and that before three months elapse, always providing inexorable fate does not oppose unsurmountable barriers, I shall have a house. A home absolutely my own, where amidst my own household penates, the gods of my hearth, I shall be at peace and there in solitude shall have moments of happiness and comfort. Yes! of real bliss after so much that has rendered me wretched.

You know nothing yet of my occupation, my hopes, my prospects. I will tell you with all the confidence a brother should confide in a brother. In Nov. last I arranged all business at Sake where I had been working at timber and was prepared to leave. I had no project in view. I must go somewhere as I could do no more there. Twas then a man with whom I was slightly acquainted and who was about to start in business here held out hopes and inducements which have all proven fallacious. I came here with him. We thought of working on ships doing repairs and I of getting some jobs at house building on shore. We built us a log house. We purchased a ship’s long boat and made her a small schooner. We thought she would be saleable but here we were deceived. We have some little property besides. When I came here I had four hundred dollars, since here I’ve earned two hundred. Materials here are expensive and living excessively so. My money is nearly gone. I hope and expect in the course of the summer to realise nearly or quite all I’ve expended, but in the meantime I fear I shall not be earning much and there is precious time lost, you see, which would be of more value perhaps were I elsewhere, than all I shall realise on what I possess here. My partner does not suit me either, of which I will tell you more when I disconnect with him. You may color this statement to neighbors, tell them I am a shipbuilder and a shipowner, that I own three quarters of a schooner, one quarter of a ship and one quarter of a brig, which is all true. The ship and the brig however, are sunk and we purchased the wrecks, which you need not tell them.

I’m now living in a house of logs which I myself builded and should be comparatively happy were I alone, but ten thousand little vexations and annoyances I’m subject to, arising from a connection I’ve before mentioned which altogether as the westerner says, make up a smart heap of dissatisfaction. I endure it with all the indifference of the Stoic to the sight of others, but I’ll assure you it will not be long before a change comes and in future I’m quite sure I shall never be so closely allied to man. Could I be quiet, could I be unannoyed, could my mind be at ease while sitting at my own hearth, the toils and perplexities of life abroad would loose nearly all their sting, and this thing can and shall be remedied I assure you.

 

Your brother ever with regard

Whit. Chase