In 1861 his health began to fail rapidly. It was thought he would not recover. He wrote epistles to his congregations commending them to God. But he rallied, and was able, with varying strength, to labor six years longer. More than ever did his ministrations breathe the spirit of the Great Teacher. He was again brought low. He was at the house of Mr. McLeod, of Southport. He felt that his end was near,—that his life-work was over; and a great work it was. He had built fourteen churches; he had registered the baptism of two thousand two hundred children, and had baptized perhaps as many more not registered; he had married more people than any living clergyman; he had prayed beside thousands of deathbeds; he had a parish extending from Bedeque to Murray Harbor, and from Rustico to Belle Creek; and he had five thousand followers, more attached to their great spiritual leader than ever were Highland clansmen to their chief. But he was as humble as a child. To God he gave the glory for all. He retained his faculties, and was glad to see his old friends at his bedside. Many came from far and near to take their last farewell and receive the dying blessing of the venerable patriarch. He sank gradually, suffering no pain, and on Friday, the twenty-second of February, in the eighty-fifth year of his age and the fifty-first of his ministry, he breathed his last. The place of interment was the Uigg Murray Harbor Road churchyard, eighteen miles distant from Charlottetown. The funeral was the largest ever witnessed in the colony. All classes united in paying the last tribute of respect to the honored dead. The cortege numbered over three hundred and fifty sleighs. As the great procession moved down through the country, at the roadsides and at the doors and windows of the houses might be seen old men weeping, and women and children sobbing as if they had lost a father; and in the presence of a vast assemblage, near the church where his eloquent voice had so often melted listening thousands, and where he had so often celebrated, at the yearly sacrament, the Saviour’s death, the remains of the Reverend Donald McDonald were laid to rest. A costly monument marks the spot. [I] * * * * *