tobacco-pouch. Their half-breed children are generally excellent
canoe-men and hunters, with the vivacity of the father, and the
endurance of the mother's race. Marcel Bernier, one of these French
Canadians, was one of the early settlers in the Cowlitz Valley; and we
have travelled with him between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, and
once stopped at his house over night. It was quite different from the
common Indian houses; having pillow-cases trimmed with ruffles and lace,
and great bear-skin mats on the door. The baby slept in a little hammock
swung from the ceiling. The family were devoted Catholics, and sung
matins and vespers, and had pictures and images of saints about the
room. We were quite impressed by the advance in civilization which the
little admixture of French blood had brought.

Christine took us to see an ancient Indian woman, who remembers the
country when there were no white people in it. She has the fifth
generation of her children about her. She is wholly blind, her eyes
mostly closed, only little bloodshot traces of them left. She sat
serenely in the sunshine, hollowing out a little canoe of pine-bark for
the youngest, two little girls who swam in the arm of the river before
the tent-door.

We went with Christine also up on the bluff to see Father Joseph, a
Catholic priest, who represented to me a new class of men, whom I had
known before only in books. His eyes were as clear blue as Emerson's
ideal ones, that tell the truth; and I knew he meant it, when he
answered a question I asked him, in a way that surprised me, and which I
should have taken, in some men, for cant. I asked him if it was not
ever solitary there; and he said, "It is enough like my own home
[Switzerland] for that, but all countries are alike to me. We have no
home here below." For twenty-five years he has lived on the top of that
hill, with only miserable Indians around him, who could repay him very
little for all his efforts. In the Indian war, he was supposed to be so
strongly on the side of the Indians, that the government agent, as I
find by the printed report, recommended his removal; although he
admitted that it was hard to say any thing against a man who had made
such unbounded sacrifices for what he considered the good of the
Indians. He had books in all languages on his shelves, and was very
intelligent and courteous.

He described the condition of the country when the first little band of
Jesuits, of whom he was