Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/245

Rh or our cowardice, our gentleness or our cruelty, depends upon ourselves. 'The Admiralty,' wrote Nelson, when expecting to command the finest fleet in the world, 'may order me a cock-boat, but I will do my duty.'" Such was the misfortune and such the spirit of Jason Lee.

When he left Oregon it was his intention to wait at the Islands for a vessel going to New York or Boston, and with the expectation that Mr. and Mrs. Gustavus Hines and his little daughter would accompany him. For a decade he had been superintendent of the Oregon Mission, and while he was in the dawn of his usefulness as it seemed to him and his friends he was removed. He did not wait for an American vessel, but, leaving his child, hurried on to New York by the Hawaiian schooner Hoa Tita for Mazatlan, thence to Vera Cruz, and to his destination.

Jason Lee did not long survive the attempted disgrace, for he died March 12, 1845, at Lake Memphramagog in the Province of Lower Canada. His last act was to make a small bequest to the institution for which he was laboring, and for the advancement of education in the country of his adoption.

I do not share the feeling entertained by some that there was any enmity or rivalry between Dr. John McLoughlin and Jason Lee. While there was controversy between McLoughlin and his friends and some of the leading spirits of the Methodist Mission with respect to the donation land claim at Oregon City in later years, it did not destroy or impair the relations of confidence and respect between Jason Lee and Doctor McLaughlin. On March 1, 1836, Doctor McLoughlin sent a subscription to Jason Lee for the benefit of the mission amounting to $180.00 collected at Vancouver, and accompanied the subscription by this letter: