d only
drift blindly on and on. Never sighting land, seeing naught but the
everlasting sweep of wave and sky, it began to be whispered in terror
that this ocean had no further shore, that they might sail on forever,
seeing nothing but the boundless waters. At length, when the
superstitious sailors began to talk of throwing their fair charge
overboard as an offering to the gods, the blue peaks of the Coast
Range rose out of the water, and the ever rain-freshened green of the
Oregon forests dawned upon them. Then came the attempt to enter the
Columbia, and the wreck on the bar.[1]

Multnomah made the lovely princess his wife, and Sea-Flower showed the
spirit of a queen. She tried to introduce among the Indians something
of the refinement of her oriental home. From her the degraded
medicine-men and dreamers caught a gleam of the majestic lore of
Buddha; to the chiefs-in-council she taught something of the grave,
inexorable justice of the East, that seemed like a higher development
of their own grim unwritten code. Her influence was very great, for
she was naturally eloquent and of noble presence. More than one sachem
felt the inspiration of better, purer thoughts than he had ever known
before when the "war-chief's woman" spoke in council. Strange
gatherings were those: blood-stained chiefs and savage warriors
listening all intent to the sweetest of Indian tongues spoken in
modulations that were music; the wild heart of the empire stirred by
the perfumed breath of a woman!

She had died three years before the events we have been narrating, and
had left to her daughter the heritage of her refinement and her
beauty. Wallulah was the only child of the war-chief and his Asiatic
wife, the sole heir of her father's sovereignty.

Two miles from the council grove, in the interior of the island, was
Wallulah's lodge. The path that Multnomah took led through a pleasant
sylvan lawn. The grass was green, and the air full of the scent of
buds and flowers. Here and there a butterfly floated like a sunbeam
through the woodland shadows, and a humming-bird darted in winged
beauty from bloom to bloom. The lark's song came vibrating through the
air, and in the more open spaces innumerable birds flew twittering in
the sun. The dewy freshness, the exquisite softness of spring, was
everywhere.

In the golden weather, through shadowed wood and sunny opening, the
war-chief sought his daughter's lodge.

Suddenly a familiar sound attracted hi