Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/129

CHAPTER IV.

METHODIST OCCUPATION

1834–1838.

Removal of Effects—Fencing, Building, and Planting—The Sorrowful work of Conversion—Missionary Failures—Daniel Lee Visits the Islands—Arrival of Kelley and Young—Figueroa's Letter—Estrangement of Ewing Young—Attack on an Incoming Party by the Natives of Rogue River—The Affair of the Distillery—Arrival of a Government Agent.

We left the missionaries with their effects upon the landing at French Prairie. The labor of removal to the spot selected had given the well-trained muscles of Daniel Lee and Edwards ample exercise. Lee relates how they missed the trail in going to the farm of Thomas McKay for horses, soon after landing, and floundered through quagmires and wet tide-land grass and how they were welcomed, on finally reaching their destination, by Monsieur La Bonté whose son Louis assisted in driving the animals. Taking the fur-traders' path over the mountains that border the Columbia and lower Willamette, through the Tualatin^[1] plains, and the valley of the Chehalem, they met at Campement du Sable the canoe party with the goods, and together they soon concluded their journey.

The little company who here pitched their tent during these last days of the Oregon summer, found before them much to be done. All around prairie, river, and sky; mountain, beast, and man stood innocent of contact with human intelligence. Their business now was to apply this mind-culture of theirs to

1. That is to say, 'lazy man,' from its sluggish movements. Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 22.