Whitman returned to the East to bring out assistants and supplies to begin one or more missions. Dr. Parker went on, under Indian guidance, to the Columbia, arriving at Fort Vancouver on the 16th of October. Here he spent the winter as the guest of Dr. McLoughlin, and when spring came set out for the upper country. He stopped at Fort Walla Walla, where he preached to a multitude of Indians. Then journeying up the valley of Walla Walla River he observed, some twenty miles from the Columbia, "a delightful situation for a missionary establishment. . . . A mission located on this fertile field," he says, " would draw around [it] an interesting settlement, who would fix down to cultivate the soil and to be instructed. How easily might the plough go through these vallies, and what rich and abundant harvests might be gathered by the hand of industry." From this place he went up the Snake River, where he seems to have fixed upon another site for a mission, and then struck off northward, exploring the beautiful valley of Spokane River. Here, too, were many Indians, who appeared to be anxious for religious instruction. Later in the year (1836) Dr. Parker sailed from Vancouver for the Hawaiian Islands, whence he returned to the Atlantic coast by way of Cape Horn, reaching his home at Ithaca, New York, in May, 1837, after an absence of more than two years. ^
1 The following year Dr. Parker published at Ithaca, N. Y., his interesting little book called "An Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains."
