The rainy season soon commenced; they had no shelter for themselves or their goods. All old Oregonians who have not been seduced and brought up by the Hudson's Bay Company can comprehend the condition they were in. Rev. Jason Lee, like Dr. Whitman with his old wagon, had undertaken a work he meant to accomplish. His religion was practical. Work, labor, preach, and practice his own precepts, and demonstrate the truth of his own doctrines. Religion and labor were synonymous with him, and well did the noble Shepard, though but a lay member of the mission and the church, labor and sustain him. These two men were really the soul and life of the mission, as Dr. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding were of the American Board. During the first winter, 1834-5, they were wholly occupied in building their houses and preparing for the cultivation of the land for their own subsistence. There was no alternative; it was work or starve. Rev. Jason Lee set the example. He held the plow, with an Indian boy to drive, in commencing his farming operations. The first year they produced enough for home consumption in wheat, peas, oats, and barley, and abundance of potatoes, with a few barrels of salt salmon. The superintendent of the mission put up at the Wallamet Falls late in the season of 1834. They had a supply of their own for the first year. It is true they did not have superfine flour to eat, but they had plenty of pounded and boiled wheat, and a change to pea and barley soup, with oats for the chickens they had received from the vessel. Daniel Lee soon falls sick, and Edwards becomes dissatisfied. They both arrange to leave the country on the _May Dacre_. Rev. D. Lee is advised to go to the Sandwich Islands, and Edwards is induced to undertake an independent school at Champoeg. Shepard toils on with his Indian and half-native school. Mr. Lee preaches and labors at the mission among the French, and at Vancouver.