So thats all for today. I pray its the Colonel that wrights here next. Its cleer an hot an the river is slow.
Durned glad the lutenant is on the mend as I dont care to be the lone able body & mind. I never was any good at wrightin. I am sorry for the speling mis-takes. I askd Pruitt to help me but hes sick of spellin words out lowd an he doesnt want to wright in the Colonels book cept I think we awt to.
July 11
Its Sgt Tillman here agin. The Colonel isnt better yet so I wright agin.
We tried not to but we got found by the Indians while we were floatin by in the dark of the night. Lucky we had Nattie hide in the bushes when we heard their gun shots so I hope shes safe with the boat. The Indians marched us away from the river. They didnt talk much an carried their guns at ready wich made me & the lutenant nervis. We had to help the Colonel walk an he was too feverd to know what happend. We awt to have taken the Indian jacket off the Colonel but we forgot. The Indians took us 10 miles or so into the woods away from the river then brot us into the chiefs house.
We ate an slept an ate more. All the time more an more Indians come to see us white people. They kept pointin at the Colonel’s jacket.
The Indians look sickly. Theres lots of couffin. The lutenant says they have consumptin.
Dear Mrs. Forrester?—
First, to address your question, the frilling you describe may be in part due to the exceptionally warm weather we have enjoyed of late. I recommend hardening the negative with a good long soak in alum and water.
Now let me say that your most recent photographs are truly remarkable, though you disparage them. The three young chickadees all in a row on the branch is most affecting, and while the pine siskin is not entirely in focus, it is a wonderful depiction of Nature all the same.
I hope you do not find this too forward, but would you mind terribly if I sent these prints on to a Mr. William Powell? He is an editor in Philadelphia and has long been a friend to me. I do not know if he will have any use for the photographs, as the sciences are not his normal subject matter, but I cannot help but to feel that these deserve a wider audience.
Sincerely,
Mr. Henry Redington
Sophie Forrester
Vancouver Barracks
June 27, 1885
Does he really see such value in my photographs? I am astonished, and not a little intimidated, by the prospect of Mr Redington sharing them with an editor.
I know Mother would not approve of my vanity, but all the same, I did a little skip of joy when Mr Redington’s letter arrived. And then I wrote back to say that I would be truly honored, but I also begged him to wait just a while longer with hopes that I might contribute some better photographs.
June 28
Miss Evelyn, as always, you are as much blessing as aggravation!
The sight of her running down the lane toward my house concerned me at first, but then it occurred to me that she is no Mrs Connor; when there is misery to be endured, Evelyn can be sure to flee in the opposite direction. I therefore could not fathom what brought her in such haste.
She was out of breath and disheveled when she arrived at the porch.
“I’ve found it, Sophie! I’ve found it!”
It seems she was out for a walk with Lieutenant Harvey, down through the orchard and near the river’s edge, when she first saw it.
“They buzz about like giant bumblebees, don’t they? One of them flew straight past us, and I ran after it, for I thought it might be your bird. For a while, I could not see it, but then I heard its loud buzzing again and saw it fly into a thicket, and there I found it, sitting in a little gray pouch on a branch.”
Before she could say much more, I had laced my boots and retrieved my straw hat and field glasses.
“What about your camera?”
I told her I would fetch it later. In truth, I was not quite ready to believe this stroke of good fortune.
Several times I have walked down to the Columbia River as far as the orchard, but never considered the area for nests. Surely all the activity and noise from the wharves, the ferries coming and going, men unloading crates into wagons and then driving them past with shouts, with all that commotion, who would think that a humming bird would choose to build its nest amid all that? And so late in the year?
Yet there it is, dressed in frilly lichen and lined with downy seeds and no bigger than a child’s teacup. The nest is built on a most precarious thimbleberry cane, about four feet off the ground, and with each gust of wind, the stock waves and trembles. The mother bird was not at home, so I crept closer and closer, scarcely breathing for worry of stirring the branches, until I could peer into the nest, and there I beheld two perfectly small white eggs.
“Was I right? Oh Sophie, is this your nest?”
Indeed it is!
June 29
It does no good to have Evelyn sighing and complaining behind me as I work.
“My God, how can you stand this tedium? Aren’t you done yet? When will you have a picture? It’s been hours!”