plifting commercial palaces and lovely homes!

We visited her in her hut outside of the city some months ago, to ask her
if she saved Seattle in 1855, by giving information to the pioneers that
the woods around it were full of lurking Indians, bent on a plot to
destroy it; for there is a legend that on that shadowy December night,
when Seattle was in peril, and the council of Indian warriors met and
resolved to destroy the town before morning, Jim, a friendly Indian, was
present at the conference as a spy. He found means to warn the pioneers of
their immediate danger.

The ship of war Decatur, under Captain Gansevoort, lay in the harbor. Jim,
who had acted in the Indian council, secretly, in the interest of the
town, had advised the chiefs to defer the attack until early in the
morning, when the officers of the Decatur would be off their guard.

[Illustration: _Middle block-house at the Cascades._]

Night fell on the Puget Sea. The people went into the block-house to
sleep, and the men of the Decatur guarded the town, taking their stations
on shore. As the night deepened, a thousand hostile Indians crept up to
the place and awaited the morning, when the guard should go on board the
ship for breakfast, and the people should come out of the block-house and
go to their houses, and "set the gun behind the door."

It was on this night, according to the legend, that "Old Angeline," as she
is now called, became the messenger that saved the inhabitants from
destruction.

The legend has been doubted; and when we asked the short, flat-faced old
woman, as she answered our knock, if she was the daughter of the chief who
saved Seattle, she simply said, "Chief," grinned, and made a bow. She was
ready to accept the traditional honors of the wild legend worthy of the
pen of a Cooper.

On returning from our visit to old Angeline, we asked Hon. Henry Yesler,
the now rich pioneer, why the princess was not better cared for by the
people of the city. He himself had been generous to her. "Why," he said,
"if you were to give her fifty dollars, she would give it all away before
night!" Benevolent old Angeline! She ought to live in a palace instead of
a hovel! Mr. Yesler doubted the local legend, but I still wished to
believe it to be true.

V.

The story of "Whitman's Ride for Oregon" has been told in verse by the
writer of this volume, as follows:

WHITMAN'S RIDE FOR OREGON.

I.

"An empire to be lost or won!"