arm to Mrs. Whitman, Black Douglas, assisted Mrs Spalding, and all passed into the fort.
It was a welcome rest after the long days on the plains and the mountains, after the camps in dust and sand, after the suns and frost and fatigue. It seemed like a dream to find this roomy old stronghold in the wilderness. Primeval forests swayed and sobbed upon the hills, primeval Indians paddled and chanted along the streams. The long low halls, the echoing floors, the roaring, wide-mouthed chimneys, the weapons of the chase and elk-skin armor on the wall, all told that the fur-traders perpetuated a storied past.
What a change was the bounteous board from buffalo-beef and mountain bread, flour and water fried in tallow. The best cooks of Canada waited on the fur-trader. Carving was carried to perfection at Fort Vancouver. Salmon, ducks, and geese and venison, the choice of an epicure, was daily fare. And fruit? through the postern gate they walked in the garden musky with odors of peaches and pears, slender-limbed apple-trees broken with their golden weights, and rows of plum and fig-trees crimsoned in the sun. Between the neat squares the old Scotch gardener had gravelled his walks and lined them with strawberry vines, and at the far end stood the grape-grown summer-house where Rae had wooed his Eloise.
But Dr. Whitman could not rest. Whatever he ought to do, that he must do without delay.
In its great westward sweep to the sea the Columbia narrows at the Dalles into a chasm that a fiend might leap. Here the salmon crowded in such prodigious numbers in their journey from the sea that from time immemorial it had been a famous fishing spot. In the summer season thousands of Indians gathered there
