Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/218

Rh of the Willamette Valley, and of the Columbia River west of the Cascade Mountains, were hopelessly diseased and depraved; and that to sustain an asylum with a few sickly orphans did not require the services even of those persons already on the ground. Nor was the character of the Dalles savages unknown to him as the banditti of the Columbia River region, whom there was little hope of benefiting. With the exception of the Umpqua and Rogue River valleys, and a portion of the southern coast, regions avoided on account of the hostile character of the natives, he had traversed the whole country south of the Columbia without finding a single place where there was any prospect of success in missionary work. Slowly it dawned upon his mind that he and his associates would have long to wait for the spiritual sky to fall, that they might catch some larks.

What should he do? Clearly as special agent of the Lord, the Lord did not require his services here? Should he then serve his fellow-man, or even himself? Might not he serve God as well by ministering to civilized man, ministering in things material as well as in things spiritual, assisting in establishing a grand and virtuous commonwealth, as by waiting on sickly savages? Would it not please his Maker as well if he became a little more a colonizer and a little less a missionary? and would it not please himself better? But how would the good people at home regard such a change of base, those earnest in sewing-societies, church sociables, and in gathering the Sunday-school pennies? Jason Lee felt that these would not approve of such a course; that in their eyes the one sickly savage was more than the ninety and nine of civilization, and that to abandon the attempt of conversion would be apostasy. He knew well enough that it was not the abandonment of his trust, or of any trust worthy of his manhood; in fact, there was nothing to abandon. Nevertheless, for the sake of the cause, which was just now beginning to assume