Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/176

Rh Mountains as ripe and waiting for the harvesters. Yet he seemed unable to awaken sufficient enthusiasm in individual members of the church to draw them from their comfortable firesides into the storms of March, which they must face to join a caravan for the summer journey over a homeless wilderness. For it was families, not single men, whom Whitman wished to establish as missionaries among the Indians. In his difficulty, and fully determined to return himself as a missionary, he appealed successfully to Miss Narcissa Prentiss, daughter of Judge Prentiss of Prattsburg, New York, and in February 1836 they were married. Mrs Whitman was a bright, fresh-looking woman, with blue eyes and fair hair, good figure and pleasant voice, more than commonly attractive in person and manner, besides being well educated, and something of a contrast to her husband in her careful habits and regard for small refinements. But one man and woman could not go alone into this new world, as did the primal pair, and Whitman sought some other husband and wife to accompany them. He had, however, started on his westward journey in March, before he found at Pittsburg, on his route, the Rev. H. H. Spalding and wife, newly married, graduated only a short time before from Lane Theological Seminary and the female college near it in the suburbs of Cincinnati, and who were already on their way to the Osages as missionaries.

Mr Spalding was considered a man of plain, practical talents, more esteemed for his sincerity and faithfulness than for his gifts, yet honored as a zealous and comparatively successful missionary. Mrs Eliza Spalding, daughter of a farmer named Hart, of Oneida County, New York, had been taught to spin, weave, and make clothing, as well as to cook. These were excellent attainments for a new country; added to which she was an apt linguist, and something of an artist in water-colors, both of which acquirements proved of use in the missionary work, the first in catching the