Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/137

86 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.