Page:Marcus Whitman, Pathfinder and Patriot.djvu/44

34 of the sage brush filling the air. Once she fainted. Then she was taken from her horse, laid down, fanned until she revived, and then was placed on her horse again, weeping and saying, "Oh, that I had one crust of bread from my mother's swill pail." Again she begged to be left to the Indians. "I cannot sit upon that horse in this burning sun any longer. Oh, this sickness, this terrible pain." She said to her husband, "I cannot live much longer. Go on and save yourself, and carry the Book of God to those Indians. I shall never see them; my work is done, but bless God, he has brought me thus far. Tell my mother I am not sorry that I came."

July 4th they entered the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the dividing line between the Atlantic and Pacific Slopes. There, on Independence Day, they alighted from their horses, and, kneeling down, with the Bible and the American flag in their hands, they took possession of the Pacific Coast as the home of American mothers and for the Church of Christ. They thanked God for His sustaining, protecting care over them, for the buffalo food sent to them daily, and humbly commended themselves, especially Mrs. Spalding, in her sinking, feeble state, to His protecting care for the rest of the journey. "And standing as we did," says Mr. Spalding, "upon the summit of those sky-built mountains, with the bright forms of Brainerd, of Butler, of Elliott, and Worcester, early missionaries to the Indians on the Atlantic shores, almost in sight, bending over the pearly gates of Heaven to bid us God speed, we especially commended and consecrated our mission, to be commenced somewhere in the yet far-off West, to Him who had sent four Indians from beyond the mountains to the rising sun, with the Macedonian cry for the Book of God and missionaries to teach it. The moral and physical scene was grand and thrilling. Hope and joy beamed on the face of my dear wife, though pains racked her frame. She seemed to receive new strength. 'Is it a reality or a dream,' she exclaimed, 'that after four months of hard and painful journeyings I am alive, and actually standing on the summit of the Rocky Mountains, where yet the foot of white woman has never trod?' There were no martial hosts, no fife and drum, no booming cannon, no orator of the day, nor reading of the Declaration of Independence, but