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170 the three sons of Thomas McKay were also of the party, though there is a conflict on that point in the statements furnished.

The first tidings of his family received by Jason Lee were of a most painful character. At Pawnee Mission, near Council Bluffs, an express arrived from Fort Vancouver, sent by McLoughlin, with the intelligence of the death of Mrs Lee on the 26th of June, three weeks after the birth and death of a son. Mrs Lee was buried among the firs that had overshadowed her when her marriage vows were taken, and her burial was the first of any white woman in Oregon.

After crossing the Mississippi, Lee began a lecturing tour, drawing large audiences in the churches, where he presented the subject of Oregon with the ardor of an enthusiast, and stimulated his hearers to furnish funds and men for the settlement of that paradise of the west. The effect of his labors was to draw into his paradise "hundreds of immigrants," says White, "from the western frontier of the states, of a restless, aspiring disposition," who gave him subsequently no little uneasiness. The interest at Peoria, Illinois, was augmented by the illness of Adams, the young Chinook, and by his remaining there through the