Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/323

 he had turned them aside he found his firkin of butter untouched.

The high wind which had arisen had blown the paper cover from the butter and the dog knew it ought to be covered, and with his feet and nose 291 had gathered the leaves for more than a rod around and covered it up.

The Indians finally poisoned the old dog for the purpose of robbing his master. Said he: "When Rover died I shed more tears than I had shed for years."

While reading, as I have, Mrs. Whitman's daily diary of her journey in 1836, I am most astonished at the lack of all complaints and murmurings. I know so well the perils and discomforts she met on the way and see her every day, cheerful and smiling and happy, and filled with thankfulness for blessings received, that she seems for the very absence of any repining, to be a woman of the most exalted character.

I have traveled for days and weeks through saleratus dust that made lips, face and eyes tormentingly sore, while the throat and air tubes seemed to be raw. She barely mentions them. I have camped many a time, as she doubtless did, where the water was poisonous with alkali, and unfit for man or beast. I have been stung by buffalo flies until the sting of a Jersey mosquito would be a positive luxury. She barely mentions the pests. She does once mildly say: "