Letter from Ilus Fabyan Carter, 16 January 1856
Portland
Dear Brother & Sister
Really after so long a
time I recd a letter from brother Wilford today
via California, a long route and a long time coming.
I was very glad to hear from you and that you
are all so well. If for the best, hope your crops
may be better another year, should they fail you
are a long ways from a market. How pleasant
it must be for you to have such fine fruit as you
raise there, and you must know how to appreciate
having been deprived of it so long. I should like
very much to have a few of your fine Peaches
and Grapes when ripe. The crops with us the
past season were very abundant, probably
never more than two thirds as much ever raised
in one year as there was the last year and still
provisions one high, owing in part to the trouble in
Europe, which continues, but we hope there is
some prospect of peace. If the money that has
been expended to destroy people there had been
used for the purchase of Bibles to distribute with
the destitute, there would be less human misery than
there now is, no doubt. The end is not yet
England and France may get into a quarrel,
and if so, the result will be disastrous. the
pride of those nations are ^is^ so great, that neither
of them would be willing to yield.
