When I undertook to come out with my wife and children and see to the settlement and disposal of the tract of land we had purchased, as one result of my visit in 1877, I was applied to by a good many fathers to take some superintendence of their sons, who desired to emigrate to Oregon. Next, one or two married couples expressed a wish to join us. Then several acquaintances, who were practical mechanics, had heard a good report of Oregon, and desired to accompany us. And I was busy in answering letters about the place and people to the very moment of sailing. I was not at all willing to have the company indefinitely numerous, not having graduated in Mr. Cook's school for tourists, and knowing something of the embarrassments likely to attend a crowd of travelers. We found our party of twenty-six fully large enough for comfort. We were kindly and liberally treated by the Allan Steamship Company, the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, and the Chicago and Northwestern Railway; but our lines did not fall to us in pleasant places when we experienced the tender mercies of the Union and Central Pacific. Our party was broken up into different cars, and our strongest portmanteaus were shattered by the most atrocious handling. [Sidenote: _PLANS OF COLONIZING._] It was a serious question if we should try to found an English colony here, in the usual sense of the word. That would have involved a separate life from the American residents; it would have fostered jealousy here, and we should have committed numberless mistakes and absurdities. We should have had to buy all our experience, amid the covert ridicule of our neighbors. And I was confident that many members of our party would have played at emigrating, and treated the whole business as picnicking on a large scale. Moreover, I was not sure that, even if we succeeded in transplanting English manners, customs, and institutions, they would take hold in this new soil. The fact was always before my eyes that the country was only thirty years old, in a civilized sense, and I doubted the wisdom of trying to transport thither a little piece of the old country. I believed the wiser course to be to plant ourselves quietly among the Oregonians with as little parade and fuss as possible, and to let our own experience dictate to others whether to join us or not. It has been our practice throughout to answer freely, and as fully as possible, the many letters of inquiry as to place and people that we have had, but to offer no advice; leaving those who were thinking of coming out to take the responsibility on themselves of deciding to come or to stay away.