326 CHARLES HENRY CAREY
merous and powerful tribes of Indians once inhabited this section, chasing their "mormish" and "moloh" (dear and elk) but they have here, as seems to have been the case with the race everywhere, rapidly disappeared. Our missionary, Rev. G. Hines, who has traveled from the Columbia to the Umqua South, after careful considera- tion and inquiries, reports that the number of Indians in the country which we have just described does not exceed one thousand five hundred men, women and chil- dren. These are divided into as many as seven different tribes, each speaking a distinct language, which cannot be understood by the others, except through the aid of an interpreter. The same remarks applies to those in- habiting the Columbia River. They are represented generally as a dispirited and melancholy race of men, and so indolent that scarcely any motive, save those of stern necessity and immediate benefit, will induce them to labor.
Here have our missionaries been toiling amidst sur- roundings numerous and peculiar difficulties, and al- though their efforts have not been blessed to the full ex- tent of their hopes, still they have not labored in vain. Oregon has received the Gospel and many of her inhabi- tants rejoice in the light of God's salvation, while others are thirsting for the waters of life.
No intelligence, however, has been received for a long time, so cheering as the account of a camp meeting held not far from Willamette. Several letters speak of this occasion. It was the first religious meeting of the kind, for the benefit of the white population, that was ever held beyond the Rocky Mountains, and was equally re- markable in other respects. There was only one tent upon the ground; that was pitched between three trees, "two of which were towering firs, and the other a stately oak, fit emblems," to use the beautiful language of Brother Hines, written on the spot, "of the majesty and power of the truths, proclaimed beneath their wide-
