Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/206

194 In 1832 a Mr. Wyeth came across by land from Boston with eleven men, with the intention of establishing a salmon fishery and expected to have met a vessel which he had sent from Boston, but he learned afterwards she had been wrecked on an island in the Pacific, and the nonarrival of his vessel obliged Mr. Wyeth to return to the United States, but his men remained in the Wallamette.

In 1834 Mr. Wyeth returned with a large number of men whom he left in the Snake Country to trap beaver, where he built the present Fort Hall, and brought about twenty men with him to prosecute the object of his first voyage in 1832, for which purpose he had despatched the May Dacre, Captain Lambert, from Boston in 1833, and which entered the river a few days after Mr. Wyeth arrived at Vancouver, who built on Wapatoo Island. Collected in 1835 about a half cargo of salmon when the May Dacre sailed in 1835, and in 1836 Mr. Wyeth broke up his establishment on Wapatoo Island. Returned to the states, offered the remains of his property in the country for sale to the Directors of the Hudson's Bay Company in London, but they referred him to their officers in the country at Vancouver, who bought Mr. Wyeth's property and his establishment of Fort Hall in 1837 from Mr. Wyeth's agent, and he left in one of the Hudson's Bay Company's vessels for Oahoo in 1838. But his labouring men dispersed in the country. The Rev. Jason and Daniel Lee of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with three laymen came overland from the states in company with Mr. Wyeth in 1834. They brought horses and cattle with them, but their supplies came by sea in the May Dacre. Messrs. Lee left the states with the intention of settling in the Flat Head Country as missionaries to those Indians but changed their minds and settled in the Wallamette Country, and as they had left