Besides harvesting a plentiful crop,[1] an addition was made to the house more than equal in size to the original structure, and fifteen acres of land additional were ploughed for sowing the labor being performed by the Lees and Edwards, Shepard acting as housekeeper and nurse. With his own hands Jason Lee salted six barrels of salmon, then the chief food of the country.
By the time this was accomplished the Mission was approaching a state of dissolution. Edwards had joined the Lees in the first instance from love of adventure, and to benefit his health, which being accomplished, he was desirous of returning home. The fur company's vessel, the Ganymede, Eales commander, was about to sail for the Hawaiian Islands, and Edwards bade farewell to the Mission superintendent. He was accompanied to Fort Vancouver by the younger Lee, who was in need of medical advice for a disease of the throat which threatened consumption.
But on arriving at Fort Vancouver Edwards' plan of returning to Missouri was changed by the verdict of McLoughlin upon the case of Daniel Lee, who he
- ↑ It consisted of 150 bushels of wheat, 35 bushels of oats, 56 bushels of barley, and 85 bushels of pease, not to mention potatoes and other vegetables. In 1836, 500 bushels of wheat were raised from 27 on the mission farm, 200 bushels of pease, 40 bushels of oats, 4½ bushels of corn, 3½ bushels of beans, 319 bushels of potatoes, and plenty of other vegetables.
missionaries to establish themselves on the Willamette, in the vicinity of the former servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, this danger would be avoided, the lives of the missionaries would be rendered secure, and at the same time those tribes most frequently brought in contact with white men, and least liable to resent innovations upon their customs, or to yield to the temptations of their savage natures, might gradually be taught foreign arts and a foreign religion. It could not be expected that when the rules of the corporation imposed upon the manager the duty of sending the company's own servants, of whatever class, out of the country as soon as their terms of service had expired, lest peaceful relations with the natives should be disturbed, the head of the company should encourage wide-spread settlement by other nationalities. But by placing the missionaries beside the Canadians, whose names on the company's books gave them a right to be there, the unpleasant necessity was avoided of objecting to any choice they might otherwise make, and the ends of fur-trading and mission work thus became happily adjusted. But Jason Lee, with a few months' experience, such as has been described, began to entertain serious doubts of the rapid evangelization of the natives of western Oregon. This I gather from his nephew's account; but that he did not so inform the board of the missionary society in New York is evident from succeeding events.
