"It is the very river of death and of desolation, thought Cecil. "It looks lonely, forsaken, as if no eye had beheld it from the day of creation until now."
Looking again at the falls, he saw, what he had not before noticed, a large camp of Indians on the side nearest them. Glancing across the river, he descried on a knoll on the opposite bank what? Houses! He could not believe his eyes; could it be possible? Yes, they certainly were long, low houses, roofed as the white man roofs his. A sudden wild hope thrilled him; his brain grew dizzy. He turned to one of the Indians.
"Who built those houses? " he exclaimed; "white men like me? "
The other shook his head.
"No, Indians."
Cecil s heart died within him. "After all," he murmured, "it was absurd to expect to find a settle ment of white men here. How could I think that any but Indians had built those houses? "
Still, as they descended the steep zigzag pathway leading down to the river, he could not help gazing again and again at the buildings that so reminded him of home.
It was Wishram, the ancient village of the falls, whose brave and insolent inhabitants, more than a cen tury later, were the dread of the early explorers and fur traders of the Columbia. It was built at the last and highest fishery on the Columbia, for the salmon could not at that time ascend the river above the falls. All the wandering tribes of the Upper Colum bia came there to fish or to buy salmon of the Wish ram fishers. There too the Indians of the Lower
