Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/121

 forth in thanksgiving to the good Father above, who has sent so good and true a companion for the long and dangerous journey. She refers to it again and again that he will have a friend in his hours of peril and danger, and not have to depend entirely upon the savages for his society.

The conference passed a resolution, as stated, giving leave of absence and fixed the time for his starting in "five days" from that day. It was not often they had such an opportunity for letter-carriers, and each began a voluminous correspondence.

The Doctor set about his active preparations, arranging his outfit and seeing that everything was in order. The next day he had a call to see a sick man at old Fort Walla Walla, and as he needed many articles for his journey which could be had there, he went with this double purpose. He found at the Fort a score or more of traders, clerks and leading men of the Hudson Bay Company, assembled there. They were nearly all Englishmen, and the discussion soon turned upon the treaty, and the outlook, and as might be inferred, was not cheering to Whitman. But his object was to gain information and not to argue.

The dinner was soon announced and the Doctor sat down to a royal banquet with his jovial 106 English friends. For no man was more highly esteemed by all than was Whitman. The chief factor at Vancouver, Dr. McLoughlin, from the