Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/99

 of the entire subject, Dr. McLoughlin promised all 87 the aid in his power to give them a comfortable start.

At his earnest petition, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding remained at Vancouver while their husbands went back to erect houses that would shelter them from the coming winter. To make Mrs. Whitman feel at ease, and that she was not taxing the generosity of their new friends, Dr. McLoughlin placed his daughter under her instruction, both in her class work and music. Every effort was made to interest and entertain the guests; the afternoons were given to excursions on the water, or on horseback, or in rambles through the great fir forests, still as wild as nature made them.

There is a grandeur in the great forest beyond the Stony Mountains unequaled in any portion of the world. In our Northern latitudes the undergrowth is so thick as to make comfortable traveling impossible, but in the fir woods and in the pine and redwood forests of Oregon, there are comparatively few of such obstructions. The great giants ten or twelve feet in diameter, two hundred and seventy feet high, and one hundred feet without a limb, hide the sun, and upon a summer day make jaunts through the forest delightful to a lover of nature.

It was a grand rest and a pleasing finale to the hardships of the wedding journey for these