CORRESPONDENCE 169
your Board, or, should your Board disapprove of the enter- prise and think the cause of Christ better served by discon- tinuing my appointment the present year, I shall acquiesce, with the privilege of continuing a correspondence with you. I trust, however, that your Board will acquiesce in my views. I am quite sure, if you were here and knew all I know of the state of things in California, you would take the most prompt measures to acquaint yourselves with the wants of that territory and meet them. Oregon must be measurably stationary for a time, 154 while California will swarm with people and overflow with wealth, gambling and dissipation, and, unless our churches act with promptness and devotion and liberality, these inexhaustible treasures are given over into the hands of the Prince of Devils, California will be morally lost and will prove a capital scourge to our nation. It is only relatively that Oregon sinks in importance. No doubt she will become three-fold as valuable to the nation as she would have been, if gold had not been found in Cali- fornia. 155 Although all is in confusion in Oregon and our citizens and members are now going and coming so that it is difficult effecting anything permanent here just at this time, yet be assured that we need more laborers even here, that the efforts already made may be followed up, and under God we may expect a rich return. This, like all other ex- citements, will sooner or later settle and people and wealth Will flow back to Oregon with astonishing rapidity. We now need at least two efficient young men in Oregon who can be well sustained by your Board, and I know that an able young man now placed in San Francisco and liberally supported, another at Sacramento City (Sutter's Fort), another in the American settlements and a fourth at the mines would find
154 This was approximately true.
The immigration to Oregon in 1849 was about 400; in 1850, about 2000; in 1851, about 1500; in 1852, about 2500; while the increase in California during these years was about ten or twenty times this number. F. G. Young, The Oregon Trail, in Oregon Hist. Soc. Quar. 1:370. This estimate probably includes only those who came overland by the Oregon Trail.
155 The influx of gold-seekers to California gave Oregon a market for its lumber and farm products. Returning miners brought gold dust with them, and the author's prophecy of Oregon's share in the prosperity of California was ful- filled. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. 11:48-59.
