Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/275

224 Loughlin, "for you to give me back my lots, since the Mission has no longer any use for them, and let me pay you for the improvements."

To this Gary had a ready reply. The lots were Mission property; there were those who stood ready to purchase them; and he was only giving their original owner the first offer. Six thousand dollars was the estimate put upon the property, two lots being reserved for the Methodist church edifice besides; and he would not consider himself pledged longer than a day or two to take that amount. Stung and worried, and suffering in his business on account of the uncertainty of his position, McLoughlin once more yielded, and agreed to pay the six thousand dollars, a part of it in the autumn and the remainder in ten years, with interest annually at six per cent. Had he known all the inside history of the scheme to deprive him of the whole of the Oregon City claim, which had met a check in the dismissal of Jason Lee, he would have thought himself fortunate to recover and retain it at that price.

The Methodist Missions in Oregon were now closed, the Dalles station only being occupied with the object of securing a valuable land claim when congress should enact the long-promised land law. When Waller was no longer needed to hold any part of the Oregon City claim, he was sent to the Dalles, but the Indians there becoming troublesome, and Whitman wishing to purchase that station, it was sold to him; and Waller returned to the Willamette Valley.

Thus ends the history of ten years of missionary labor, in which nothing was done that ever in the least benefited the Indians, but which cost the missionary society of the Methodist Episcopal church a quarter of a million of dollars. As colonists the seventy or eighty persons who were thrown into Ore-