the river. The
others after much beating followed their leader; and in a little while
a long line of half submerged horses and riders was struggling across
the river, while the loaded canoes brought up the rear. The rapid
current swept them downward, and they landed on the opposite bank at a
point far below that from which they started.

On the bank of the Columbia, near Morgan's Lake, an old gnarled
cottonwood still marks the ancient landing-place; and traces remain of
the historic trail which led up from the river-bank into the interior
of the island,--a trail traversed perhaps for centuries,--the great
Indian road from the upper Columbia to the Willamette valley.

The bank was black with people crowding out to see the latest
arrivals. It was a thronging multitude of dusky faces and diverse
costumes. The Nootka with his tattooed face was there, clad in his
woollen blanket, his gigantic form pushing aside the short Chinook of
the lower Columbia, with his crooked legs, his half-naked body
glistening with grease, his slit nose and ears loaded with _hiagua_
shells. Choppunish women, clad in garments of buckskin carefully
whitened with clay, looked with scorn on the women of the Cowlitz and
Clatsop tribes, whose only dress was a fringe of cedar bark hanging
from the waist. The abject Siawash of Puget Sound, attired in a scanty
patch-work of rabbit and woodrat skin, stood beside the lordly Yakima,
who wore deerskin robe and leggins. And among them all, conscious of
his supremacy, moved the keen and imperious Willamette.

They all gazed wonderingly at Cecil, "the white man," the "long
beard," the "man that came from the Great Spirit," the "_shaman_ of
strong magic,"--for rumors of Cecil and his mission had spread from
tribe to tribe.

Though accustomed to savage sights, this seemed to Cecil the most
savage of all. Flat heads and round heads; faces scarred, tattooed,
and painted; faces as wild as beasts'; faces proud and haughty,
degraded and debased; hair cut close to the head, tangled, matted,
clogged with filth, carefully smoothed and braided,--every phase of
barbarism in its most bloodthirsty ferocity, its most abject squalor,
met his glance as he looked around him. It seemed like some wild
phantasmagoria, some weird and wondrous dream; and the discord of
tongues, the confusion of dialects, completed the bewildering scene.

Through the surging crowd they found their way to the place where
their lodges were to be pi