cordial support of your excellency, and I am certain will show that the citizens of Oregon have lost no patriotism, by crossing the mountains, and that they will be equally prompt in coming to their country s standard as their brethren in the United States.
Yours respectfully,
R. B. MASON, Colonel First Dragoons, Governor of California.
To this Governor Abernethy replied:—
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, OREGON CITY, April 3, 1848.
To His Excellency, R. B. Mason, Governor of California :
SIR : I received your letter of the twenty-eighth of January last, together with a copy of Commodore Shubrick s letter of sixth of December last, and in reply would beg leave to state that in the existing state of affairs in this territory, I do not think it would be prudent on my part to send any men out of the territory. Before this reaches you, my letters of December twenty-eighth, January twenty-sixth, and March eleventh, together with copies of the Spectator, will have reached you, from which you will have learned our situation, and the need there is of our being assisted by the government of the United States. I have in these letters begged that a sloop-of- war might be sent to our aid. I should have called for men, as we need a few disciplined troops to take the lead, but concluded you could not spare them. We need very much a few field pieces, balls, and powder; a quantity of rifle powder and lead; and, in fact, everything that is really needed to carry on a war. May I be permitted to ask your aid in furnishing us with these necessary articles? I send you with this a Spectator of March twenty-fifth, also an extra issued this day, and a copy of my proclamation calling for three hundred men in addition to those already in the field; and it is not at all improbable that I may have to call a large number of men into the field to protect the Willamette valley. I am glad that we have been visited by Major Hardie, as he can on his return in form you more fully of our situation than I can by letter. I regret that circumstances are such that this gentleman returns without the aid you expected to receive from Oregon, and sincerely trust that you will not lay it to our want of patriotism, for 1 assure you that nothing would have afforded me more pleasure than to have met the call of your excellency, and I have not a doubt but that it would have been cheerfully responded to by our citizens.
I have the honor to be, your obedient servant,
GEORGE ABERNETHY,
Governor of Oregon.
