Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/154

136 several well known citizens and early settlers were mentioned; but public sentiment took no form before March, when the Star, published at Milwaukie, proclaimed as its candidate Thurston's opponent in the election of 1849, Columbia Lancaster. In the mean time R. R. Thompson had been corresponding with Lane, who was still mining in southern Oregon, and had obtained his consent to run if his friends wished it. The Star then put the name of Lane in place of that of Lancaster; the Spectator, now managed by D. J. Schnebley, and a new democratic paper, the Oregon Statesman, withholding their announcements of candidates until Thurston, at that moment on his way to Oregon, should arrive and satisfy his friends of his eligibility.

But when everything was preparing to realize or to give the lie to Thurston's fondest hopes of the future, there suddenly interposed that kindest of our enemies, death, and saved him from humiliation. He expired on board the steamer California, at sea off Acapulco on the 9th of April 1851, at the age of thirty-five years. His health had long been delicate, and he had not spared himself, so that the heat and discomfort of the voyage through the tropics, with the anxiety of mind attending his political career, sapped the low-burning lamp of life, and its flickering flame was extinguished. Yet he died not alone or unattended. He had in his charge a company of young women, teachers whom Governor Slade of Vermont was sending to Oregon, who now became his tender nurses,