CORRESPONDENCE 295
can commission and send them out. The coast and Van- couver will probably be peopled with an enterprising and intelligent people.
I think Br. Johnson and myself will need $200 cash another year to enable us to devote ourselves to the work, and, should we place ourselves so as to stop our rents and keep a little stock, perhaps we can live with that by subjecting our families to taking the charge of our little temporals. Probably one half of that in such goods as families need in wearing apparel and articles of furniture, would be as convenient for us as the money, and, by this means, your Board may sustain its missionaries by the assistance of friends who would cheerfully contribute wearing apparel when money is out of the question.
Rec'd Feb. 5, 1847.
Astoria, Clatsop County, Oregon Ter.,
Jan. 4th, 1847. Dear Brother Hill :
Being in daily expectation that the ship Tulon will leave the mouth of the river for the Sandwich Islands, I embrace this as the only opportunity I shall have till spring to address you by letter, and this will not reach you for eight or ten months, if ever.
Through the tender mercies of God, we are all in good health, except that I am confined to the house with a wound received from an axe in my foot last week. The wound, however, is doing well and will probably heal in two or three weeks. I will here remark that we probably have one of the most salubrious as well as mild climates in the world. But I have taken my pen for other purposes than to give a descrip- tion of climate and soil, and the beauties of the scenery. We have chosen this as our field of labor should God graciously please to spare our unprofitable lives, although at present the population of the place and vicinity is small. This I have done from a strong conviction that the coast must soon become the most important part of the country, and that, too, probably
