The original of the following letter is now in the possession of the Oregon Historical Society, from which this copy is made. Rev. Vincent Snelling was the first Baptist minister who came to Oregon. "Oregon City, 9th March, 1852." "Mr. John McLoughlin, Esq., "Dear Sir: "Having learned that you intend shortly to visit Washington City, and knowing that you have been misrepresented by our Delegate from this country,--and wishing as an honest man, and a friend to truth and justice, to contribute something toward the correction of those misrepresentations, I submit to your acceptance and disposal the following: "I arrived in Oregon in the fall of 1844 and have been an observer of your treatment of and conduct to the American immigrants. I know that you have saved our people from suffering by hunger and I believe from savage cruelty also. I know you sent your boats to convey them down the Columbia river, free of charge, and that you also sent them provisions when they were in a state of starvation, and that you directed them to be distributed among the immigrants, to those that were destitute of money equally with those that had. Nor did your kindness stop there, as many of us lost nearly all we possessed by the time we arrived in the valley. You continued your favors by letting us have both food and raiment for the year, seed wheat, and charging no more than the same number of bushels the next harvest, plows and cattle to plow with. To conclude I do affirm that your conduct ever since I have known you has been such as to justify the opinion that you were friendly to the settlement of the country by Americans. I judge the tree [by] its fruit; you have done more for the American settlers than all the men that were in it, at that time. "With sincere wishes that you may obtain your rights, "I subscribe myself yours, "VINCENT SNELLING, "Ord. Minister Gospel, Baptist." DOCUMENT Q _Excerpts from "The Hudson's Bay Company and Vancouver's Island" by James Edward Fitzgerald, published in London in 1849; and excerpt from "Ten Years in Oregon" by Rev. Daniel Lee and Rev. J. H. Frost, published in New York in 1844._