George Stoughtenburg, who, while attempting to ford the Willamette on horseback, about a mile below the Mission, was drowned. That autumn Shepard was seriously ill with a scrofulous trouble, which necessitated the amputation of his leg; he did not long survive the operation, his death occurring on the 1st of January, 1840. For two years he had suffered from the disease. He left a wife and two infant daughters.[1] Thus passed away from his work in the Methodist Mission its most faithful and successful servant, whose gentleness had won him the hearts of all his associates. He was a large, fine-looking man, but little over forty years of age at the time of his death. With Shepard died all interest in the hopeless scheme of educating the native children of the Willamette. We cannot blame his associates for feeling its hopelessness; to them it was a rootless Sahara, upon which the sun might beat for centuries without bringing forth fruit enough to feed a whip-poor-will. And yet his was a self-sacrificing, generous nature, that never lost faith in the power of love to redeem the lowest humanity.
Such was the condition of affairs in the spring of 1840. The Lausanne not arriving as early as was expected, Daniel Lee, who had been waiting a few days at the Willamette Mission, grew impatient, for his betrothed was among the passengers, and he hastened forward to meet the ship at its anchorage. Solomon Smith accompanied him with his Clatsop wife, who wished to return to her own people as a missionary, having experienced a change of heart; and on the 16th of May they started on their trip, and held religious services with the Indians wherever they found it convenient to land. They had just encamped on the 21st of May at Chinook, when a vessel was seen coming up the channel under Cape Disappointment, and anchoring in Baker Bay. Lee lost no time in going on board, and in meeting his uncle and the
- ↑ He was born in Phillipston, Massachusetts, August 16, 1799.
