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Captain Gray's company, or, Crossing the plains and living in Oregon. Duniway, Abigail Scott, (1834–1915).
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CAPTAIN GRAY'S COMPANY; OR CROSSING THE PLAINS AND LIVING IN OREGON.

BY

MRS. ABIGAIL J. DUNIWAY.

"Westward the course of Empire takes its way."

PORTLAND, OREGON: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY S. J. McCORMICK,

1859.
page: iii[View Page iii]

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, BY MRS. ABIGAIL J. DUNIWAY, In the Clerk's Office of the Supreme Court of the United States for the Territory of Oregon.

INTRODUCTION.

A SENSIBLE and popular lady writer has remarked that want of time should be no apology for defects of author ship. I heartily agree with that lady's views, but when a frontier farmer's wife undertakes to write a book, who has to be lady, nurse, laundress, seamstress, cook and dairy-woman by turns, and who attends to all these duties, unaided, save by the occasional assistance of an indulgent husband who has cares enough of his own, in such a case—and this is not an exaggerated one, as many who know me can testify—"want of time"—is a necessary, unavoidable excuse for fault of style or discrepancy in composition. Youth and inexperience, also, are other excuses, which, though I am not exactly ashamed of, especially the former, must, in justice to myself, be hinted at, in this my first literary effort of magnitude.

My object has been, not to scale the giddy heights of romance, but rather to write a book which the world's workers, the stay and strength of out land, shall read with benefit. If time-honored customs have been fearlessly assailed, it has not been with the object of awakening notice, applause, censure or criticism, but because I earnestly believe in the principles advocated, and wish the reader to think and investigate. Let him, with Bible as his text book, Nature as his guide, and Christianity as his principle, search and know for himself page: iv-v (Table of Contents) [View Page iv-v (Table of Contents) ] before he condemns. Skeptics, you who laugh at the Bible, who mock at the mission of the lowly Nazarene, who considered the most humble worthy of His notice; ye who live merely that you may amass riches, eat, drink and die this book is not for you. I leave older and wiser heads to parry your studied blows, while I turn, in respect and confidence, to the lenient, intelligent, pious and elevated, for encouragement and assistance.

I have taken some liberties in the arrangement of incidents that some may notice, but a better wielded pen than mine has asserted that this is the novelist's privilege. Hundreds can testify that romance has been almost wholly set aside in the incidents of travel over the Plains, and wholly avoided in the incidents of travel over the Plains, and wholly avoided in the description of scenery.

If this book but cast a ray of hope, or gleam of consolation before the pathway of the weary; if it should cause one reader to look higher than this earth for solace, or open up to him a better way to live and enjoy life, or shall be instrumental in causing the sterner, to look more to the welfare of the weakest of the tried and suffering of the weaker sex, these pages, penned under every disadvantage, shall not have been written in vain.

To those who have other work to do than spending their time in perusing romance without shade of reality, but who delight in the ideal when accompanied by use, truth, reform or investigation, this volume is respectfully and affectionately dedicated.

A. J. DUNIWAY.

SUNNY HILL SIDE, OREGON.

CONTENTS.

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