Port Townsend August 23rd. (58?)

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Dear Brother Lucius

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I think you are a bad correspondent as well as myself. Here it has been I don’t know how long a time since I received a letter from you and I have been all the time anxious to hear from you and know from your own self how the world fares with you and surely you being at home as you are and all things being convenient about cannot have the same excuses for not writing which I have knocking about from place to place roughly and in the roughest country too on earth I think, living in tents, in shanties and in the open air too almost and surrounded as I usually am with talkative noisy boisterous company. I am again in America you will see and what is more am working for Uncle Sam. We are putting up buildings for soldiers and officers quarters at Port Townsend. How long I shall remain here is hard to tell but probably two or three months. The wages are four dollars per day and board.

I have every reason to believe the times are going to be pretty good here on the Sound now for a year or two providing the Indians do not molest us too much. This country has many resources which will favour its prosperity, perhaps slow but sure, for timber of some descriptions it is perhaps the best locality in the world and the lumber trade even now is carried on to a heavy extent and spars are shipped from our ports here to all parts of the world.

It is also a pretty good farming country the winters being so mild stock will live without much if any feeding and we have the finest wheat and the best potatoes in the world though perhaps they may have larger crops in some other places. The climate too is healthy I think though probably it would be bad for consumptive people and also for rheumatic complaints as we have cold nights and mornings and cold breezes from the sea and much dampness in the atmosphere all the year yet it seldom rains during the summer months. I’ve been wanting to make you a visit but can’t yet. I can live much easier here than in the States though it is hard to save much money for every thing is so expensive and then money slips through ones fingers so easily.

I have now some five or six hundred dollars due me by different persons on this inlet of which it is very doubtful if I receive a cent. I must be more careful in future of my earnings. I have some property in Victoria which cost me fifteen hundred dollars or upwards and probably it would not sell for much over the half of its cost now. I hope however it will be more valuable bye and bye. If I could dispose of it so as not to be at too great a loss I would live there no more. It is not over and above an agreeable place for an American to live in. Their customs are so different.

I should be happy to get a letter from you and tell me everything you can think of concerning home affairs and old acquaintances. One of our neighbours was killed about two weeks ago by some of the piratical Indians from far north. It was done in the night. The Savages lurked about the house causing his dog to bark until the man got up went out of his door to ascertain the cause and was shot on the steps. They then robbed his house but his wife and children managed to escape by the windows and conceal themselves among the fern in the fields before the Indians entered. Before the neighbours could be rallied they had taken off the man's head to carry home as a trophy and fled away in their canoe. They had no spite against the man, no injury to avenge, but it was a great deed to murder a white man and an American and all the same. Though done treacherously and without provocation it is not the first time murders of a similar character have taken place by these northern redskins as well as by those in the interior and yet our government, altogether taken up in quarrelling about niggers etc., refuses to give us means of protection and even pretends to deny that there are Indian hostilities in Oregon and Washington territories, even refuses to pay volunteers who in answer to the call of the Governor took the field to drive back the savages which had murdered the families of their neighbours in cold blood at their hearths and treacherously and unsuspicious of danger.

You may still direct your letters to Victoria until instructed otherwise as I shall probably have no permanent abode elsewhere at present. I would like to know where Timothy Parsons is - I have not heard from him within three years. I received a letter from him in /54 written just a twelve month before in San Francisco. It had been to South Australia and nearly all round the world searching for Vancouvers Island which it finally found when it was too late to do me any good for I wrote to him immediately but got no answer - he had probably removed. He had sold property belonging to him and me and received on it about $320, and there was still due us some $200, or $300 for which he held obligations which he said he would send me if I thought I could go to Oregon and collect it. I wrote to him that he might send me those obligations as it was probable I might have business which would lead me to Oregon and in such a case I should see if I could get the money but I suppose he never got my letter or if he did I did not get his answer, and since that I’ve not known where to direct a letter to reach him and I suppose he is in just the same fix as regards me. Probably so much time has passed now that the papers would do me no good if I had them but I would like to know what circumstances Tim is in etc. Don’t fail to write soon.

Your brother Whit. in haste

Lucius Chase