Daniel Lee remained away nearly a year, that is to say, till August 1836, when he returned in the Hudson's Bay Company's bark Nereid, Captain Royal, with renewed health, and contributions to the Oregon Mission from christianized Hawaiians. Among his fellow-passengers were the Reverend Herbert Beaver, newly appointed chaplain of the fur company, and his wife, who took up their residence at Fort Vancouver, and of whom mention has already been made.
Meanwhile the winter of 1835–6 had passed quietly at the Mission. Edwards had taught a small school near Champoeg. The following summer some twenty-five children were brought in from the settlers of French Prairie, and from the natives on either side of the Cascade Mountains, increasing the number of persons at the Mission to thirty. Though in a lovely wilderness, in midsummer, the folly of breathing foul air was permitted. All the people there must be crowded into one small house; all of them were unaccustomed to such confinement; many of them were diseased; many became ill from change of diet, so that in the malarious atmosphere there came an epidemic bearing in its diagnosis a near resemblance to diphtheria.[1]
- ↑ Daniel Lee says of it: 'Some of the symptoms were alarming, resembling the croup'—membranous croup is probably meant, as in both diseases a mem-
brown longspur, Plectrophanes Townsendii; Oregon snow-finch, Fringilla Oregona; green-tailed finch, not described; black white-banded woodpecker; and black red-backed woodpecker, not described; Harris' woodpecker, Picus Harrisi; Vaux' chimney swallow, Cypselus Vauxi; long-tailed black pheasant not described. Of water-birds there were added to the catalogue the white-legged oyster-catcher, Hamatopus Bachmani; Rocky Mountain plover, Charadrius montanus; Townsend's sand-piper, Frinca Townsendii; violet green cormorant, Phalacrocorax splendens; Townsend's cormorant, Phalacrocorax Townsendii; and slender-billed guillemot, Uria Townsendii. Of these birds a half-dozen are credited to Audubon, who was exploring in the region of the Rocky Mountains; and one, Townsend's warbler, to Nuttall. From Townsend I learn all that I have to tell of the scientific labors of Nuttall. 'Throughout the whole of our long journey,' he says 'I have had constantly to admire the order and perfect indefatigability with which he has devoted himself to the grand object of his tour. No difficulty, no danger, no fatigue has ever daunted him, and he finds his rich reward in the addition of nearly a thousand new species of American plants.' This was certainly reward enough. One of the most beautiful trees of Oregon bears his name, Cornus Nuttal, a tall and full blossoming dogwood, equal in the splendor of its silvery flowers to the magnolia of the gulf states. The Oregon alder, Alnus Oregona, a handsome tree, and Fraximus Oregona, the Oregon ash, were first described by this botanist.
