th him. The
dense atmosphere of smoke soon shut his form from view. Silence fell on the council. The hearts of the Indians were dead within them. Amid their por tentous surroundings, the appalling signs of the wrath of the Great Spirit, the fatal apathy which is the curse of their race crept over them.
Then rose the medicine-man, wild priest of a wild and debasing superstition, reverenced as one through whom the dead spoke to the living.
"Break up your council!" he said with fearful look and gesture. "Councils are for those who expect to live! and you! the dead call you to them. Choose no chief, for who will be left for him to rule? You talk of plans for the future. Would you know what that future will be? I will show you; listen!" He flung up his hand as if imposing silence; and, taken by surprise, they listened eagerly, expecting to hear some supernatural voice or message prophetic of the future. On their strained hearing fell only the labored breathing of the sick chiefs in the council, the ominous muttering of the far-off volcano, and loud and shrill above all the desolate cry of the women wailing their dead.
"You hear it? That death- wail tells all the future holds for you. Before yonder red shadow of a sun " pointing to the sun, which shone dimly through the smoke " shall set, the bravest of the Mollalies will be dead. Before the moon wanes to its close, the Willamette race will have passed away. Think you Multnomah s seat is empty? The Pestilence sits in Multnomah s place, and you will all wither in his hot and poisonous breath. Break up your council. Go to your lodges. The sun of the Willamettes is set,
