that to Lake Winnipeg. There the express was divided, part going down the Lake to Nelson River, descending it to the Hudson Bay. The rest was taken up the Lake and across to Lake Superior, and on to Montreal. My friends in New York and New Hampshire got my letters in September. The postage was twenty-five cents.
The following is an extract from a letter written at Fort Vancouver February 23, 1833, by Mr. Ball to his parents:
Believing you still feel that interest in me that is usual to parents, and that you have always manifested towards me, I will inform you of my welfare.
My health has been uniformly good ever since I saw you some fifteen months ago, and never better than now. I wrote you from the mountains and hope my letters were received, and that this will be also.
I continued my journey across the country, leaving the place I wrote you from last July and arriving here at this place last October. Afterwards I went to the ocean, a hundred miles or more below here, then returned. Here I have been in comfortable quarters, teaching a few boys and enjoying the conveniences of home and good living.
This is a post of the Hudson Bay Company, which extends its trade of furs from Canada to this place. Here they have extensive fur operation, raise wheat, corn, pease, potatoes, etc., and have cattle, sheep, and hogs. I have been civilly treated by them, although I possessed no introductory letters or anything to recommend me, being destitute of everything. Little can be brought under any circumstances across such an extent of wilderness of country. Now I am going to the trade you taught me farming from which more comforts can be obtained with less labor, and it is more healthy than most others.
But perhaps I am too fast. You know your changeable weather brings on colds, and those colds, consumption. Here some three years past, some have had fever and ague, though never known even in the recollection of the natives before. I shall have to begin farming with a few tools, and accommodations. But mind you, my farm is cleared, and I have the choice of a tract as large as the whole State of New Hampshire, except what is taken by seven other farmers. I am going up the Multnomah or Willamette, near the mouth of which is the fort. I shall settle in the neighborhood of those already there. I have this week returned from looking out the place; find good soil, most of it prairie; still there is timber in abundance for fencing, fire, building, etc., well dispersed over the country. The white oak often grows on the plains like an orchard, and. there are groves of pine and other timber. The same fir you have grows to a great height and
