60 Coville Joltn Jeffrey. 



The plants of this season's collecting, 1853, from the localities 

 mentioned above, were the last that Jeffrey sent to Edinburgh, 

 and his employment by the association practically ceased at 

 this time, his original contract being for three years' service. 

 The following extract from a letter received by Andrew Murray 

 in Edinburgh from his brother, W. Murray, who was living at 

 San Francisco, gives a hint of Jeffrey's probable movements : 



"SAN FRANCISCO, 19 May, 1854. 



" I yesterday received your letter enclosing one for Jeffrey. * * * 



" I went again to McKinlay, Garrioch & Co., and they have deciphered 

 his address to be Fort Yuma, on the Gila River (just where it joins the 

 Colorado), where he says he will probably be until the 1st of August, and 

 directs his letters to be forwarded by Adams & Co.'s Express to the care 

 of their agent at San Diego, Mr. F. Ames. 



"I accordingly put his letter in an envelope addressed in conformity 

 with these instructions and took it to Adams & Co.'s Express. * * * 



"They, McKinlay, Garrioch & Co., say he is a hard working, enthu 

 siastic, very steady, and temperate man, and that just before starting for 

 San Diego he was some three weeks arranging the proceeds of his excur 

 sions, and they doubt not that he despatched them. He had been for 

 some weeks sick before that, which accounts for part of the long stay in 

 San Francisco. * * * 



" I met the consul just now and he said he had received another letter 

 for Jeffrey. I forwarded it along with yours. The consul says that he 

 (Jeffrey) never called at the consulate ; that there had been quite a budget 

 of letters and other things there for him, which have since been forwarded 

 to him by McKinlay, Garrioch & Co. at the same time as your previous 

 letter. * * * 



" You will possibly think that I ought to have been able to find out 

 Jeffrey while he was here, but at that time I neither knew that McKinlay, 

 Garrioch & Co. were acquainted with him, nor that Allan, Lowe & Co. 

 were connected with the Hudson's Bay Co." 



Mr. John Ballender, who knew Jeffrey at Fort Vancouver in 

 1852 and 1853, writing to Andrew Murray under date of Feb 

 ruary 1, 1854, gives a brief outline of Jeffrey's movements in those 

 years, and says : 



" If this can be in any way of service to you I shall be most happy, as 

 I feel very anxious respecting the fate of poor Jeffrey, knowing well that 

 if he followed up the route hinted to me he had some dangers of no very 

 trifling nature to contend with." 



No further information about Jeffrey appears to have reached 

 Edinburgh, but to those who know the terrible chances taken 

 by $ man attempting a trip to Yuma in the fifties, alone, there is 

 little doubt that he perished of thirst upon the Colorado Desert. 



