HONORED SIR,--The within accounts, as per voucher No. 1, drawn on the Hudson's Bay House at Vancouver, are in part pay for interpreters and necessary assistants in guarding and conducting me from point to point, in my late unavoidable excursions during the excitement of the fall of 1842 and spring of 1843, and other necessary voyages since, together with the presents in hoes, medicines, and clothes, to enable me to secure and hold a sufficient influence over the aborigines to prevent threatened invasions and serious evils to the colony and country. Those upon Mr. Abernethy and Mr. A. E. Wilson are for like purposes; drafts upon these houses being my principal means of paying expenses in this country. As I hire only when requisite, and dismiss at once when no longer necessary, my interpreter's bills, including clerks and all assistants for the different tribes, do not exceed $300 per annum up to the present time; notwithstanding, at one time, for sixty days, I was under the necessity of hiring two men at the rate of three dollars per day each. Traveling expenses in 1842, three hundred and eighty dollars ($380). In 1843, three hundred and ninety-six dollars and fifty cents ($396.50). In presents for the two years and two months, two hundred and ninety dollars and seventy-five cents ($290.75); in medicines, hoes, and sundry useful articles, to encourage them and strengthen my influence among them, this being my only way to succeed to any considerable extent. Presents become the more indispensable from the fact of the long-continued and constant liberality of the Hudson's Bay Company toward the Indians of this country. Had all remained in as quiet a state as when the colony was small, and no jealousies awakened, most of those small expenses might have been avoided, but, unless a military post be at once established, or more means put into my hands to meet their increasing wants, my expense will be increased, and trouble multiply; but at this moment, were one thousand dollars placed in my hands to lay out judiciously in medicines, hoes, plows, blankets, and men, women, and children's clothes, to distribute annually, more security would be effected, and good done to the aborigines, than in ten times that amount expended in establishing and keeping up a military post,--such is their desire and thirst after the means to promote civilization. As this voyaging is most destructive to my wardrobe, saying nothing of the perils and hardships to which it exposes me, shall I be allowed the sum usually allowed military officers, which Esquire Gilpin informs me is ten dollars per each hundred miles? I will place it down and leave it to your honorable consideration, not doubting, sir, but you will do what is proper and right in the premises. I shall charge only for such traveling as was unavoidable in the execution of my official business. With highest respect, I am, dear sir,