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 that were left unburied. During this fearful visitation, which attacked the colonists as well as the natives, Dr. McLaughlin displayed the most heroic philanthropy, in his laborious attention to the sick and dying. The Indians superstitiously attributed this scourge to a quarrel between some agents of the Hudson Bay Company and an American captain, which led the latter to throw a species of charm into the river by way of revenge. The fever, however, made its appearance annually, though in a less malignant form; and the inhabitants have discovered both its preventive and its remedy. The smallpox is the principal disease that alarms the natives; they are in continual dread of it, and imagining that they have a short time to live, they no longer build the large and convenient cabins to {24} which they were formerly accustomed. Notwithstanding the ravages above mentioned, the population of Oregon amounts to nearly 110,000 souls, residing chiefly in the north. This part of the country, fortunately, escaped the diseases which decimated the inhabitants of Willamette and the Columbia, and still rages from time to time in the south.

The tribes of this territory differ much in character and personal appearance. The savages who frequent the coast, especially towards the north, are of a much more barbarous and ferocious temperament than those of the interior; nor are they less dissimilar in their manners, customs, language, and external features. The tribes and languages are almost as numerous as the localities. From twenty-five to thirty different idioms have been distinguished among them, a circumstance which increases in no small degree the labors of the missionary. In the interior of the country, the natives are of a mild and sociable disposition, though proud and vindictive; intelligent though inclined to indolence. Their belief