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time. The next day he brought his decision, "I will accompany you." Aged men, yet living (1899), say that in answer to their responses concerning Congress, he kept saying, as if talking to himself, "I'll do it; I'll go, I'll go to Washington."
This was no sudden impulse. "This vast and fertile country belongs to us," Dr. Whitman was wont to say. " Congress had delayed too long, while England gains a foothold. Bring in people, build houses, plough up the soil, and Oregon is ours."
There was another reason for going. A letter had been brought from the American Board at Boston: " The Indians are so intractable that we have decided to discontinue the mission."
"Discontinue the mission! "That would be taking the heart out of Dr. Whitman. "Have I toiled here six years to abandon the field at last? It must not be. Why, these Indians have their little farms in every direction, and are every year extending them farther. Is that nothing in six years? Suppose they are unruly at times, what else can be expected of wild, untamed Cayuses? Men are not civilized in a day. And is not this on the highway of all future immigration? The very gateway and the key?"
An Indian courier flew over the hills to Lapwai, another to Tschimikain, near the present Spokane, where Walker and Eells had built a station. In the little library at Whitman's they met for consultation. In an agony of grief Mrs. Whitman begged their intervention. Even imperious little Helen Mar stamped and cried.
"You must not go," said Spalding.
"No man can live upon the plains in winter," said Walker.
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