300 REVEREND EZRA FISHER
chairs, three stools, a small pine table about two feet by three, two old trunks which have traveled with us about 20 years, and a very few cooking utensils which we have brought with us or obtained at exorbitant prices. We have two tea cups and four saucers ; more are not to be obtained in the country at any price. Most articles of clothing and furniture, when they can be obtained, are three 'or four times the price they are in the States. We have neither fire shovel, tongs nor and- irons, but a common barn shovel. We often think, if we had a few of the most commonly indispensable articles of house- hold furniture and could provide our children with the most coarse but comfortable apparel so that we could meet the many pressing and important calls for ministerial labor all over the country in all the varied relations of our calling, we should be happy.
Our Territory is needing the labors of at least five or six devoted Baptist missionaries. The time has come when we, as a denomination, must have men in the field, or other men will gather the harvest. Our Methodist brethren are now sustaining five or six missionaries in the settlements, and at this very moment, had we the men and means, our denomina- tional views are as favorably received as any other. Brother Snelling is a worthy brother, and would gladly wear himself out in the ministry but for the pressing cares of his family. Brother Johnson is doing what he can at Oregon City and vicinity. My labors will be principally confined to this county, unless we are so liberated from secular cares as to enable me to spend a portion of the time in traveling through the settle- ments now forming on the Chehalis and at Puget Sound, 117 as well as the upper settlements. Should the settlement of the Oregon Question be what we anticipate, we shall greatly need a missionary stationed at Puget Sound before you can com- mission a suitable man and send him to the field. And should Upper California remain under the United States govern- ment, a missionary will be greatly needed at San Francisco
117 See note 220 for the early settlements on Puget Sound. The upper set- tlements were probably those in the Willamette Valley.
