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garb—fur cap, buckskin trousers, and all—to the city of New York and into the office of the great editor, Horace Greeley, who described him, referring to his clothing, as "the roughest man we have seen this many a day." Again, on board the steamboat Narragansett, going from New York to Boston, he impressed a traveller as one of the strangest figures that had "ever passed through the Sound since the days of steam navigation "; yet, "that he was every inch a man and no common one was clear." At BoSton he succeeded in getting the board to withdraw its order to abandon the southern missions. He wished them to send out a few good families to settle about the stations as supports to the missionaries. At Washington he urged the Secretary of War to establish along the Oregon trail a line of forts and farming stations, which might sen^e as a protection against the Indians and also furnish emigrants with needed supplies. By the middle of May he was back at Independence, ready to take up the line of march with the great company gathering there. We have already spoken of his important services on the route.

Decline of missions, 1 843-1 847. Although the Indians welcomed Whitman back in the fall of 1843, with every indication of pleasure at his safe return, yet from this time the missionaries gradually lost their power over the surrounding peoples.^ Their letters

Spectator, published April 5, 1843. Both are reprinted in the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society for June, 1903. iMr. Spalding, indeed, wrote in June, 1843, that "the cause