Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/160

 is plain the journey will not be completed within the anticipated 144 time, and the dread of hunger joins the ranks of the tormentors. The stench of carrion fills the air in many places; a watering place is reached to find the putrid carcass of a dead animal in the spring. The Indians hover in the rear, impatiently waiting for the train to move on that the abandoned trinkets may be gathered up. Whether these are gathering strength for a general attack we cannot tell. There is but one thing to do—press on. The retreat cannot hasten into rout, for the distance to safety is too great. Slower and slower is daily progress.

"I do not pretend to be versed in all the horrors that have made men groan on earth, but I have followed the "Flight of Tartar Tribes," under the focal light of DeQuincy's genius, the retreat of the ten thousand under Xenophon, but as far as I am able to judge, in heroism, endurance, patience, and suffering, the annual retreat of immigrants from the Black Hills to the Dalles surpasses either. The theater of their sufferings and success, for scenic grandeur, has no superior.

REV. H. H. SPALDING.

"The patient endurance of these men and women for sublime pathos may challenge the world. Men were impoverished and women reduced to beggary and absolute want, and no weakling's murmur of complaint escaped their