Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/295



edge of the river and the foot of the hills were fringed with deciduous trees. Here peace was enshrined and the warriors of the different tribes congregated once a year, to engage in friendly rivalry in the games that were known to them, and to traffic with each other in such articles of commerce as they possessed. Ho account exists of any violation of the neutrality, but a great catastrophe occurred during the continuance of one of their festivals from which only a few of the assembled Indians escaped. According to the accounts of the Indians, the great Seatco, chief of all evil spirits, a giant who could trample whole war parties under his feet, and who could traverse the air, the water, and the land at will, whose stature was above the tallest fir-trees, whose voice was louder than the roar of the ocean, and whose aspect was more terrible than that of the fiercest wild beast, who came and went upon the wings of the wind, who could tear up the forest by the roots, heap the rocks into mountains, and change the course of rivers with his breath, became offended at them and caused the earth and waters to swallow them up—all but a few, who were spared that they might carry the story of his wrath to their tribes, and warn them that they were banished from the happy valley forever."

" The next person," says Semple, "to stand upon the scene of the ancient convulsion will be the all-conquering ' average manof the Anglo-Saxon race, who will tear up the matted grass and the sweet flowers with his plow, and deprecate the proximity of the snow-clad peaks because they threaten his crops with early frosts and harbor the coyote that tears his sheep."

Such were the ideas entertained even by intelligent people as late as 1888, and hence "Olympic" and "Olympian" were words very appropriately applied to these mountains. The trader Meares knew as little of these mysterious heights as the Greeks of the summits of their Olympus. The loftiest one is eight thousand one hundred and fifty feet, while Mount Constance, the second highest, is seven thousand seven hundred and seventy feet above the sea.

A few prospectors had penetrated a little distance into the mountains from the settlements along the Strait, who gave glowing accounts of the possibilities of this region,—its im