Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/169

118 in such profusion, that not the fiftieth part becomes the food of organic life."

A mission located in this valley he believed would draw to itself a settlement of the Indians, who would cultivate the soil, while at the same time they were taught sacred things. Accordingly, he selected for a mission station a spot on the north bank of the Walla Walla River, near the mouth of a small stream now known as Mill Creek, where there was a small valley covered luxuriantly with rye grass, from which the Indians called it Waiilatpa, or Waiilatpu. It was not the most cheerful of sites for a homestead, being surrounded almost entirely by high rolling hills covered with coarse bunch-grass; but it furnished water and wood, and presented a certain picturesqueness which its very isolation enhanced. It was but twenty-two miles from Fort Walla Walla, which was by no means an unimportant recommendation to a solitary white family.