a company of diverse spirits—­Trevette, the reputed gambler, but the true friend of the Indian races; Lee, who had beheld Oregon in his early visions, and now saw the future of the mountain-domed country in dreams; sharp-tongued but industrious and warm-hearted Mrs. Woods; the musical German girl, with memories of the Rhine; and the Indian chief and his family.  The Columbia rolled below the tall palisades, the opposite bank was full of cool shadows of overhanging rocks, sunless retreats, and dripping cascades of glacier-water.  Afar loomed Mount Hood in grandeur unsurpassed, if we except Tacoma, inswathed in forests and covered with crystal crowns.  The Chinook winds were blowing coolly, coming from the Kuro Siwo, or placid ocean-river from Japan; odoriferous, as though spice-laden from the flowery isles of the Yellow Sea.  Warm in winter, cool in summer, like the Gulf winds of Floridian shores, the good angel of the Puget Sea territories is the Chinook wind from far Asia, a mysterious country, of which the old chief and his family knew no more than of the blessed isles.

“It is a day of the Great Manitou,” said the old chief.  “He lights the sun, and lifts his wings for a shadow, and breathes on the earth.  He fills our hearts with peace.  I am glad.”

“I only wish my people in the East knew how wonderful this country is,” said Jason Lee.  “I am blamed and distrusted because I leave my mission work to see what great resources here await mankind.  I do it only for the good of others—­something within me impels me to do it, yet they say I neglect my work to become a political pioneer.  As well might they censure Joshua.”

“As a missionary,” said the old hunter, “you would teach the Indians truth; as a pioneer, you would bring colonies here to rob them of their lands and rights.  I can respect the missionary, but not the pioneer.  See the happiness of all these tribal families.  Benjamin is right—­Mrs. Woods has no business here.”

“Adventurer,” said Mrs. Woods, rising upon her feet, “I am a working-woman—­I came out here to work and improve the country, and you came here to live on your Injun wife.  The world belongs to those who work, and not to the idle.  It is running water that freshens the earth.  Husband and I built our house with our own hands, and I made my garden with my own hands, and I have defended my property with my own hands against bears and Injuns, and have kept husband to work at the block-house to earn money for the day of trouble and helplessness that is sure some day to come to us all.  I raise my own garden-sass and all other sass.  I’m an honest woman, that’s what I am, and have asked nothing in the world but what I have earned, and don’t you dare to question my rights to anything I possess!  I never had a dollar that I did not earn, and that honestly, and what is mine is mine.”

“Be careful, woman,” said the hunter.  “It will not be yours very long unless you have a different temper and tongue.  There are black wings in the sky, and you would not be so cool if you had heard the things that have come to my ears.”