At nine o'clock one of friend Plymale's buggies came for us, and a span of spirited horses, held well in hand by Master Willie Plymale, carried us over the beautiful country to Manzanita [the Central Point area], eight miles distant from the scene of the riot, and here we met a splendid audience in the pleasant church among the spreading oaks, and for over two hours the good people listened with the deepest interest to the gospel of human liberty.
    In this neighborhood there are some of the handsomest and thriftiest farms we have ever seen, even in this preeminently beautiful country. The families of General Ross, Mr. Wrisley, Mr. Constant and Mrs. Merriman are among the wealthiest landowners whose acquaintance we have made, their elegant farms being well stocked, containing many acres of well-tilled soil, and large and exceedingly thrifty orchards. . . .
    On Tuesday, accompanied by "Uncle Sam," the indomitable and irrepressible champion of liberty, whom all knaves are afraid of, we went on to Ashland, our way leading through a fertile valley of yet more radiant loveliness than any we had seen hitherto. The landscapes, that are in many places wild to intense ruggedness, now soften into billowy undulations, and, as we approach very near the beautiful city of peace, the verdant vale narrows into a cove-like "cuddy," and on the hills and at their feet the little city nestles, like a brooding dove in her content and loveliness. Flower gardens and fruit trees, handsome homes and sloping lawns abound, and clear, trickling water courses through pebbled ditches, with a merry, rippling melody, suggestive of continued human happiness. . . .

    The Ashland House, where we found comfortable accommodations and excellent food, is kept by Mr. and Mrs. Houck, who made our sojourn at their hotel decidedly pleasant. The well-known mercantile firm of McCall & Baum have a commodious and handsome brick store, where they do an immense business, their trade ranging from darning needles to Haines' harvesters, and from chewing gum to tons after tons of staple dry goods and groceries. We had not time to visit the woolen mills, though the neat, painted buildings looked invitingly at us from their location under the hill, but we called at the office of the "Ashland grist mills," which were established here in '54, and which have grown from a small beginning to a mammoth enterprise. There are a number of small dry goods and grocery stores, a drug store, a hardware emporium, a milliner's store, a splendid saddlery and harness shop (kept by Mr. Klum), a jeweler's corner, a boot and shoe shop, etc., but not a single groggery or house of ill repute. The contrast between the reception we have met from the prominent gentlemen of Ashland, as compared to that accorded to us by the ringleading, whisky-pandering element in Jacksonville, that thinks it owns the city, is just what we might expect from the different moral elements of the two places. Jacksonville is ruled by lies and rum, Ashland by truth and soberness. The Ashland Tidings is a very creditable weekly paper, of which Mr. Leeds is the present editor. There is a large liberal element both here and at Phoenix, and the morals of these towns speak significantly well in favor of free religion. If we wanted to settle in an inland town, we know of none where there are greater promises for the future than in Ashland. The decent citizens of Jacksonville are anxious to get away from their modern Sodom and settle here, where they can send their children to school without fear of their being decoyed into wickedness by a riot-producing mob.
Abigail Scott Duniway, "Editorial Correspondence," The New Northwest, Portland, July 24, 1879, page 2
DEAR READERS OF THE NEW NORTHWEST:
    We remember spending the next Monday night after leaving Jacksonvile with the excellent family of Mrs. Dean, of Willow Springs, from whose hospitable home a party of us were taken in a hack on Tuesday morning to a noted mining camp, where we were shown over the auriferous grounds by Mr. Beck, the gentlemanly owner of one of the richest gold-bearing gardens in Jackson County. The diggings are dry now, and further operations have ceased for the summer, though all of the necessary arrangements for mining remain upon the grounds. We listened with much interest  to the proprietor's graphic and well-illustrated description of the various methods of securing the ore. There were rockers, sluiceboxes, flumes, ripple boxes, dippers, sieves and whatnot, the half of which we cannot remember or describe.
    For a number of acres the earth has been burrowed out, turned over and thoroughly washed, leaving the surface all scarred and corrugated, as though a cancer had been gnawing at its vitals, and had left it spent and desolate at last, because it could no longer find food to its liking upon which to forage. Mr. Beck, a thorough gentleman, whose only fault is protracted single blessedness, located this claim a dozen years ago, and has added to it from time to time by purchase, until he now has paying ground enough to keep a half dozen men at work for a lifetime. But, like most successful men, he is not carried away with his good fortune, and he takes life philosophically, as a sensible and prosperous gentleman should. There is also a very rich quartz mine on the Dean ranch, a mile or two above Mr. Beck's, but we did not have time to visit it, although the camp where the miners were at work was plainly visible from the post office, where we all waited for half an hour for the arrival of the stagecoach, the view we enjoyed from the front door the while being passing beautiful. Mt. McLoughlin, looking for all the world like a mammoth muskmelon, with the gaps between its corrugated ridges filled with snowy lines of melting loaf sugar, loomed high above the hill-encircled valley, that, like a huge table laden with fruits and cereals, smiled placidly in the face of the bending sky, while Flora, Ceres and Pomona swayed their magic scepters everywhere. Gorgeous summer, resplendent in her trailing robes of ripened wheat, had seated herself at her harvest feast, and sated Plenty reveled in the very height of her glory. But yonder comes the stage, and we must stop these reveries for the nonce, while we climb to the dusty boot, and, hooked by our tightly clasping digits to the iron rods that fairly scorched them in the blistering heat, go crashing down the road.
    Eight miles and Rock Point, where we enter the one hotel and seek a room to rest for an hour, and then sally forth to reconnoiter. The little burg is fast asleep, though it is midday. The few people here seem to neither think nor act--that is, if we except the landlady and the stage men and their wives, who deserve commendation for the courtesy and kindness with which they treated us, and without which we should have simply counted the time in disgusted discontent during every waking minute of the next twenty-four hours. For some reason, which we leave the reader to conjecture, the bills sent from Jacksonville announcing the lecture had not been received or posted. The man who had charge of the schoolhouse didn't appear upon the scene, and but for the aforesaid stage men, who used the coach candles to light the schoolroom, and the advent of a large hackload of young gentlemen. and ladies from Willow Springs, the lecture would have been an entire failure. But, with these efficient aids, we captured the fort and held it. And the next time we stop over at Rock Point somebody besides the landlady and the transportation people of the otherwise dead-asleep little hamlet will know it. There are men here pretending to do business as merchants who would think you were telling a Woman Suffrage lie if you should inform them that Andrew Jackson was dead. Of course such men are furious for the revival of the "lost cause," and, having no colored slaves to subjugate, they insist upon the further subjugation of the women.
    We are much relieved when the friendly stagecoach takes us aboard on Wednesday at twelve M., and, with our face turned northward, we go crashing on toward Roseburg, every turn of the revolving wheels hurrying us further away from the thugs of Jacksonville--thank God--and bringing us that much nearer heaven.
    Three o'clock and Grants Pass. Now we are among reading and thinking people, and, of course, among friends. The hotel here is kept by Mr. and Mrs. Dimick, who also have charge of the store and post office. Here we rest till half past eight, and then meet a goodly audience in the schoolhouse, who listen gladly to the gospel of liberty. We have long had several subscribers to the People's Paper here, and wherever the people read and think, and abjure whiskey and lewdness, our mission is always welcomed.
    After the lecture the friends gathered for an hour at the hotel, where we held a delightful social reunion with both young and old, and we would gladly have accepted their half-dozen invitations to hold meetings at other places had our other numerous engagements permitted. Mr. Dimick is building a large hotel, Mr. Campbell has a flourishing carpenter's shop, there are several families living near, and the various industries necessary to form the nucleus of an inland town in the midst of a fine farming region are in process of inception.
    People came from six to a dozen miles to attend the meeting, and this, too, in the midst of harvest and in the heat of midsummer. The next day at three p.m. we embarked for Levens' Station, thirty miles distant from Grants Pass, and, after a breakneck ride of four and a half hours, alighted at the hotel, where an eager audience awaited us. Tired, bruised and travel-worn as we were, we soon met the friends of human liberty in the hall above the store, where we addressed them for an hour and a half, and when, at a late hour, we disposed of our weary bones and aching head upon one of Mrs. Levens' sumptuous beds, we dreamed that all the eggs in Jacksonville had been hatched into full-fledged sage hens, that were driving such lawmakers as dealt in slander and rottenness into the open fields, making them scatter the filthy garbage broadcast. Then, after a while, it seemed that golden fruitage crowned the labors of the sage hens, until in all the beautiful land there was no more room for the offensive debris that had erewhile filled the minds of men with evil thoughts and loathsome deeds.
    This, the Levens ranch at Galesville, was one of the most noted stopping places for travelers in this region during the palmy days of the Southern Oregon gold mines. The hotel, which is a large log building, covered outside with weatherboards and paint, and lined inside with ceiling and cloth and paper, was riddled in many places with bullets during the Indian war. More than one fortune has been made with this hotel and farm, and many others are yet to be made right here. But we must not linger here, inviting as is the prospect, for yonder comes the stage, and we are off for Canyonville, some fifteen miles away. They do have long miles in this wild country, presumably because its surface is so hilly that it takes a great deal of measuring to span the distances, and they count the leagues by air lines.
    The coach is crowded, but we are fortunate enough to secure an outside seat. Several passengers climb to the extreme top rather than go inside, and there they perch till we reach Canyonville, though they are sometimes in imminent danger of losing their heads by contact with the intersecting telegraph wires, which occasionally hang alarmingly low over the great highway.
    Now we are on the Canyonville toll road, a ten-mile thoroughfare, constructed with infinite labor and expense through mighty mountain gorges, where for long distances the way is barely wide enough for the prancing team, which goes tearing ahead in the darkness, the stagecoach candles sending forth a glare of cheery light for a little distance, beyond which the gloom is rendered all the denser by the contrast. You cannot see the leaders' heads, which at every turn (and there are many hundreds) are plunging into gaps like Erebus, where black Cimmerian darkness holds high carnival with the reigning ghoul of Night. On, on and on we go, bounding, crashing, plunging at a breakneck speed, for the stage line, without which this whole country would be like a huge demijohn with the cork driven home and hermetically sealed--the stage line, which brings many a resident who curses it his only chance for a livelihood, is on short time in its transits now, and we are half an hour behind.
    Eleven o'clock and Canyonville. The little town is as still as the fabled Lethe. The gibbous moon has loosed her hold upon the air and fallen down behind the tree-covered mountains, and her silvery light no longer dims the glory of the jeweled stars. The Canyonville House, where we take refuge for the night, is aroused by our advent, and a bright-eyed daughter of the good landlady shows us to a tiny room, where we soon doze away into dreamland, the chief subject of our cogitations--home.
    This evening (Saturday) we are to begin a course of lectures here in the church, and in our next can tell you all about the place, the meetings, and the people.
Canyonville, July 26, 1879.
The New Northwest, Portland, August 7, 1879, page 2


Dear Readers of the New Northwest:
    Canyonville is a hospitable and prosperous little town, in the midst of an enclosure of tree-covered hills, at whose feet a little river sings merrily. Here we found our old friends of legislative memory, Hons. Riddle and Colvig, the former a brother of our staunch coworker, Mrs. Merriman, of Manzanita, and the latter a brother of the gallant Major of Willow Springs. We do not remember how these gentlemen voted on the woman question, but we know that they met us in Canyonville with that recognition and courtesy which we have never failed to meet anywhere except in Jacksonville, and that they not only gave us respectful treatment, but they emphatically suppressed any attempt at the Jacksonville style of guffaw and burlesque whenever it was attempted by others.
    The lectures were held in the church, and were very largely attended, the best elements among both men and women forming the audiences on each occasion. There was plenty of good-natured enthusiasm, but the very best order marked the exercises throughout, although we were told by ladies that trouble was expected from the whisky ring, and we were looking for it. A rabble always takes its cue from men who are looked upon as leaders, and without such encouragement they will not organize a riot.
    There are two hotels, a schoolhouse, mill, a half-dozen stores, etc., etc., in Canyonville, and several very good and substantial dwellings, besides a large number of dilapidated shanties, and we didn't count how many saloons.
    Mr. Frank Woodward, who knows everybody, and who has been for many years a mining engineer, and is now operating in mining stocks under the direction of San Francisco stock brokers, introduced us to Mr. W. F. Briggs, President of the Tellurium mine, and, accepting his invitation and the latter gentleman's escort, we on Monday embarked in Mr. B.'s family carriage and paid a visit to the mine, about three miles distant from the town. This mine was opened and incorporated in November of '76, under its present management. A road leading to it has been constructed at great labor and expense around the mountainside, and just wide enough for a single track. Below this track is a tree-studded precipice, suggestive of speedy dissolution in case of accident to horse or vehicle as you travel up or down it. Up and up and up we go, and at last we reach the boarding house, where Mr. Jennings, the general superintendent, and Mrs. Webb, the efficient landlady, make us welcome in a primitive cabin, with skylights in the roof, a long table on the floor, and mineral specimens everywhere. Here we rest among the rock-ribbed fastnesses of this mountain-crowned retreat till dinner is ready, and are then joined by Mr. Webb and a half-dozen workmen, with whom we indulge in a substantial meal, for which the fatigue of the journey and the glorious air has whetted our appetites to voracity. After dinner, our party, including Mr. and Mrs. Webb, Messrs. Jennings and Woodward, self and some of the miners, each armed with a lighted candle, sallied forth to explore the tunnel, which at the date of our visit had been burrowed or driven into the resisting heart of the uncomplaining mountain for a distance of 460 feet, at a depth of four or five hundred feet beneath the surface at its terminus. We confess that it looks as though these men have reached a silver bonanza. But its development has involved great expense, and for want of sufficient capital to go on rapidly with the enterprise, its progress is necessarily slow. They are now erecting a small crusher, with a capacity for crushing four tons of rock per day. This rock, a gray quartz of a greenish tinge when first exposed to the light, assays from $60 to $150 to the ton, with a remarkable evenness in the average yield. For a long distance the tunnel was driven through a flinty gray granite, from which the fire flies at every stroke of the pick. Then came a sort of pumice stone, so soft and shelving that it had to be heavily braced with timbers to keep the tunnel safe, and after that quartz was again reached, where free gold glitters here and there quite temptingly in the arched chambers as the tunneling goes on. There is a large percent of platinum in the late assays, and also a vein of asbestos, which is remarkably pure in quality. Of course it is impossible to estimate the final yield of this mine, but the present outlook is certainly promising. This whole mountainous country is vastly rich in minerals of every description, and we believe will ultimately surpass the wildest dreams of the old miners of '49 in its yield of precious ores.
    Returning to Canyonville, we made ready to continue our journey on the morrow, and were off at an early hour for the village of Myrtle Creek, about eight miles distant, where we were in due time safely landed at the Overland Hotel, kept by Mr. and Mrs. Buick, who, with their interesting sons and daughters, met us with the cordial welcome that is the custom of the stage road. This village, like all others in the Southern Oregon mountains, nestles at the feet of an amphitheater of elevated ranges, but is more beautifully located than Canyonville, and contains only the well-laid nucleus of what may sometime grow into an important town. Here in the evening we met a fine audience, gathered from the village, the farms and the foothills, and the next midnight boarded the friendly stage for Roseburg, which we reached in the gray of the coming twilight, the driver, a relative of President Lincoln, having materially shortened the journey by a thrilling narrative of the past adventures of "Reub," the near wheeler, who, he said, was "the noted horse of the road." He had run away times without number, killed one driver, and otherwise made himself famous, all of which failed to inspire us with a special liking for the sleek-coated equine. But the driver said the fellow wasn't at his best anymore, and couldn't run far now if he tried.
    We reached Roseburg in a weary mood, but, after a few hours' rest at the hotel, were made welcome at the pleasant home of Mr. and Mrs. Flem. Owens, in their cozy cottage beside the Umpqua River, where the air was delightfully cool, and where rosy children, happy birds and swaying corn sang symphonies of sweet repose. Mr. Owens had engaged the courthouse for the forthcoming lectures before our arrival, but a strong movement was gotten up by the opposition to checkmate our movements, which culminated in a free concert, for which an attempt was made to get possession of the courthouse and shut us out. But the subterfuge was too transparent to succeed, though the free concert was held in Masonic Hall during both lecture evenings, thereby diminishing our attendance to a comparatively small number. But our welcome among the better classes was never more marked. Among the gentlemen to whom we were specially grateful for many courtesies were Mr. F. Owens, Mr. Sol. Abraham, Mr. Asher Marks, Mr. Benjamin, of the Land Office, Mr. Skidmore, the editors of the Independent, Plaindealer and Star, and Messrs. Perkins and Headrick, of the hotel. Among the ladies to whom we are alike indebted were the wives of these gentlemen, and Mrs. Roberts, twin sister of Mrs. Plymale, of Jacksonville (and as much alike as twin peas), Mrs. Dr. Hoover, Mrs. Compton and Mrs. Wright. We've promised to visit Roseburg again as soon as other engagements will permit. The people are just splendid.
    Saturday, and home, thank heaven! Just six-and-twenty years have marked their changing seasons since we went forth a bride. And now, as we all gather around the festive board, without one missing link in the loved family circle, we bid you, kind reader, a respectful adieu.
Portland, August 2, 1879.
The New Northwest, Portland, August 14, 1879, page 2