fe for the Indians, and died seemingly in vain,
sowed seed that sprung up and bore a harvest long after his death. And
to-day, two centuries since his body was laid in the lonely grave on
Wappatto Island, thousands of Indians are the better for his having
lived. No true, noble life can be said to have been lived in vain.
Defeated and beaten though it may seem to have been, there has gone
out from it an influence for the better that has helped in some degree
to lighten the great heartache and bitterness of the world. Truth,
goodness, and self-sacrifice are never beaten,--no, not by death
itself. The example and the influence of such things is deathless, and
lives after the individual is gone, flowing on forever in the broad
life of humanity.

* * * * *

I write these last lines on Sauvie's Island--the Wappatto of the
Indians,--sitting upon the bank of the river, beneath the gnarled and
ancient cottonwood that still marks the spot where the old Columbia
trail led up from the water to the interior of the island. Stately and
beautiful are the far snow-peaks and the sweeping forests. The woods
are rich in the colors of an Oregon autumn. The white wappatto blooms
along the marshes, its roots ungathered, the dusky hands that once
reaped the harvest long crumbled into dust. Blue and majestic in the
sunlight flows the Columbia, river of many names,--the Wauna and
Wemath of the Indians, the St. Roque of the Spaniards, the Oregon of
poetry,--always vast and grand, always flowing placidly to the sea.
Steamboats of the present; batteaux of the fur traders; ships, Grey's
and Vancouver's, of discovery; Indian canoes of the old unknown
time,--the stately river has seen them all come and go, and yet holds
its way past forest and promontory, still beautiful and unchanging.
Generation after generation, daring hunter, ardent discoverer, silent
Indian,--all the shadowy peoples of the past have sailed its waters as
we sail them, have lived perplexed and haunted by mystery as we live,
have gone out into the Great Darkness with hearts full of wistful
doubt and questioning, as we go; and still the river holds its course,
bright, beautiful, inscrutable. It stays; _we go_. Is there anything
_beyond_ the darkness into which generation follows generation and
race follows race? Surely there is an after-life, where light and
peace shall come to all who, however defeated, have tried to be true
and loyal; whe