Port Townsend July 20th/57

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Dear Brother George

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A long time has now gone past since I wrote to you, partly through neglect and partly from inconvenience in consequence of changing my quarters etc.

You will see that I’m again on the American soil - the stars and stripes, the banner of freedom, again floats over me. I breathe again the free air from the American hills and from the bosom of the unshackled sea. It’s been about a month since I came to Port Townsend and am now working at the garrison for the government. We shall have a job here of some six or eight months probably. Our wages is about four dollars per day. The territory is all quiet, no Indian disturbances of late, but it is not supposed that the peace will be permanent or that the war is wound up for there has been no treaty made with them since the war and those east of the Cascade mountains will not allow Americans to pass through their country. The country about Puget Sound is slowly increasing in population and growing in importance from the fact of its almost inexhaustible supply of very valuable timber which is shipped to almost all parts of the world. Even the English and French Navies have been supplied with several cargoes of heavy spars from these waters.

The 9th of Sept. 1852 I arrived at Portland Oregon in the evening. Timothy Parsons by his own choice and contrary to my better judgment, was to take our horses down the Columbia from the Dalles by the pack trail and fell sick on the way and was obliged to go down in a boat and leave the horses to the care of another person.

The Horses were left in the keeping of a farmer near Portland and a receipt taken for them. On the 16th I set out in company with four others for Puget Sound, having understood it was a fine country with great facilities for making money. At night we slept on the south bank of the Columbia making down our bed which consisted only of blankets alongside a fence and in the open air. There was a ferry here and at the house of the owner of the ferry was stopping Tim Parsons. He was not yet well but gaining and I supposed at the time his disease was nothing but the effects of a cold - fatigue and exposure. I gave him the receipt for the Horses and also for the waggon which I had left at the Dalles to be sent on my order to whatever place I should direct and told him to act with regard the property altogether as if it was his own. I promised also to write to him immediately on my arrival at the Sound which I did and several letters afterwards but got no letters from him for more than two years and I feared he had died and blamed myself for leaving him there sick. At last when I had given up all expectations of ever hearing from him again I got a letter which was written twelve months before in San Francisco, which was properly directed and plainly too but had taken it into it’s head to go to Sidney and Melbourne - South Australia before visiting Vancouver Island. He had disposed of all the property in one way and another but there was yet $200 or over due in Oregon for which he had obligations which he said he would send me if I desired. I immediately wrote to him and told him he might send me the papers as it was not impossible but I might visit Oregon and in that case I might collect the money.

Since then I have never heard from Parsons. Probably he had removed elsewhere before my letter reached San Francisco and from his getting no letter from me he may have thought I had left Victoria. Poor fellow. He was sick all the time. He stopped in Oregon with the ague and fever and had a hard cough which the doctors call the consumption. When he wrote me from Cal. he was well, excepting a slight touch of the scurvy of which he was then about well. On the 17th we crossed the Columbia and arrived at Olympia the 24th. Here I might have got work through the winter at about $50 per month and my board but there were men in the place at the time belonging at Port Townsend who offered to take us down and employ us there and we determined to go and so on the 26th we went aboard a schooner of about 60 tons and reached Port Townsend Oct 1st. Here we had piles to cut and timber to square but unfortunately for me the ague took me after working only half a day and shook nearly all the life and energy and vitality out of my system. For six to seven weeks I done nothing after which I undertook to work thinking I was well but had no strength. Worked a few days and had the chills, was laid up a week, worked again 3 or 4 days, had the ague another week and so continued for two months longer. Got discouraged and determined to leave Puget Sound forever. Saw a man who promised me a passage to San Francisco if I would go with him to Soke on Vancouver’s Island and help him get out timber eight or ten days which offer I gladly embraced for I had now no money but I told him I was weak from the effects of the fever and ague and perhaps could not work hard but he said never mind, with what I could do he would be satisfied. So Jan 21st/53 I bid good bye to Port Townsend, went to Soke, remained there about three weeks and then went aboard a schooner we had loaded with lumber Feb. 17th bound for San Frisco. March 10th we entered the Harbor of San Francisco after a long and to me wearisome passage having been sea sick all the time from the moment we lost sight of land off Cape Flattery until we were anchored in Harbor again. Storms and very rough sea, the ship rolling and the water continually washing over her decks and pouring into her cabin and the pumps in constant motion for nearly two weeks when first out to sea.

March 11th/53 I went on shore and visited the streets of the far-famed city thronged with the busy, the idle, the gay. The city of golden attractions which has vacated the seat in the cottage at home of many a promising youth and saddened the hears of thousands of fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts. O! city of yesterday which like Jonah’s goard comparatively speaking, sprung up in a night, what will thy doom be? Thy secret crimes and unpublished deeds of wickedness would disgrace the chronicles of the dominions of Pluto and Proserpine Hells dred Potentates.

More hereafter

Yours affectionately Whit. Chase

 

George B Chase

Remember me to Mrs. George B Chase and All the little ones