On the 18th of June Parker took final leave of Fort Vancouver, and sailed for Honolulu, where he was compelled to wait until the middle of December for a vessel to the United States, reaching his home in Ithaca the 23d of May, 1837,[1] having travelled 28,000 miles.
We have now to deal with the results of the exploration ordered by the American Board. When Mr Parker decided to proceed alone, Dr Whitman turned back with the caravan to St Louis for the next year's supplies, reaching the Missouri frontier late in the autumn of 1835. The business in hand was something requiring all his superabundant energy, for before spring he must bring into the service of the Presbyterian missions in Oregon persons enough to set up at least two stations, one among the Flatheads and one among the Nez Percés.
To enlist the sympathy of Christians, he took with him two Indian lads, as did Columbus, Pizarro, and Wyeth, and as do others, down to the Indian agents and military men of the present day, when wishing to interest the public in alien and savage races. With these he went directly to the missionary board, and reported the field of mission work west of the Rocky
- ↑ With the departure of Mr Parker from Oregon ends his relation to its history. He published in 1838 at Ithaca, N. Y., a Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains, the first actual report of the country and the Indain tribes since the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, if we except the partial accounts of Kelley. William Strong of Portland remarks in his Hist. Or., MS., 23, that he was a proof-reader on Parker's book, 'the first book in regard to the country by an American.' Parker's remarks upon the geography, geology, climate, productions, and possibilities of the then unsettled Oregon territory show close observation, and supplementing his own discoveries with information contributed by the gentlemen at Fort Vancouver, formed a faithful and valuable account of the country.
built at Blackwell, England. Her paddle-wheels were small and well forward. She carried a crew of thirty men, armament 4 six-pounders, with a large supply of small-arms. The decks were protected by boarding-netting, the natives being restricted to the gangways for access. After leaving the Columbia in 1837 she never afterward entered it, but was engaged in coasting the northern seas, collecting furs, and supplying the northern forts. This steamer entered the harbors of Esquimalt and Victoria in 1836. She was in 1881 a tug in the latter harbor. Seattle Intelligencer, Jan. 1, 1881; Finlayson's V. I. and N. W. Coast, MS., 6.
