work of half a lifetime might be done
in a few days.

"The tribes are all gathered together in one encampment, and I can
talk with them all, tell them of God, of the beauty of heaven and of
the only Way. Then, when they disperse, they will carry my teaching in
every direction, and so it will be scattered throughout all this wild
land."

This was the thought that came to Cecil when he awoke on the morning
after the trial. Now was the time to work! Now was the time for every
element of argument, persuasion, and enthusiasm to be exerted to the
utmost.

Earnestly did he pray that morning, kneeling in his lodge beside his
couch of furs, that God would be with and help him. And as he prayed,
warm and glowing was the love and tenderness that filled his heart.
When the day was a little more advanced, he entered upon his work. The
camp was astir with life; nearly all had finished their morning meal,
and the various employments and diversions of the day were begun. Each
tribe or band had pitched its lodges apart, though not far from the
others. It was not so much an encampment as a group of many
encampments, and the whole made up a scattered town of huts and
wigwams.

A precarious and uncertain quiet had succeeded the agitation of the
day before. Multnomah's energy had awed the malcontents into temporary
submission, and the different bands were mingling freely with one
another; though here and there a chief or warrior looked on
contemptuously, standing moodily apart, wrapped in his blanket. Now
and then when a Willamette passed a group who were talking and
gesticulating animatedly they would become silent all at once till the
representative of the dreaded race was out of hearing, when a storm of
indignant gutterals would burst forth; but there were no other
indications of hostility.

Groups were strolling from place to place observing curiously the
habits and customs of other tribes; the common Willamette tongue,
precursor of the more modern Chinook jargon, furnishing a means of
intercourse. Everywhere Cecil found talk, barter, diversion. It was a
rude caricature of civilization, the picture of society in its
infancy, the rough dramatization of that phase through which every
race passes in its evolution from barbarism.

At one place, a hunter from the interior was bartering furs for
_hiagua_ shells to a native of the sea-coast. At another, a brave
skilled in wood-work had his stock of bows and arrows spread out
before h