will and mys-
tic charm he would sway them to his bidding. The withered lips of death, or spirit voices, should tell him what he wished to know. Abjectly superstitious as was the idea it involved, there was yet something grand in his savage despotic grasp after power that, dominating all he knew of earth, sought to bend to his will even the spirit-land.
The chief believed that the departed could talk to him if they would; for did they not talk to the medi cine men and the dreamers? If so, why not to him, the great chief, the master of all the tribes of the Wauna?
He knelt down, and began to sway his body back and forth after the manner of the Nootka shamans, and to chant a long, low, monotonous song, in which the names of the dead who lay there were repeated over and over again.
"Kamyah, Tlesco, Che-aqah, come back! come back and tell me the secret, the black secret, the death secret, the woe that is to come. Winelah, Sic-mish, Tlaquatin, the land is dark with signs and omens; the hearts of men are heavy with dread; the dreamers say that the end is come for Multno- mah and his race. Is it true? Come and tell me. I wait, I listen, I speak your names; come back, come back!"
Tohomish himself would not have dared to repeat those names in the charnel hut, lest those whom he invoked should spring upon him and tear him to pieces. No more potent or more perilous charm was known to the Indians.
Ever as Multnomah chanted, the sullen roar of the volcano came like an undertone and filled the pauses of the wild incantation. And as he went on, it
