Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/98



not to bury the dead, but fled to the sea-coast, leaving their homes to the ravens and the wolves. The sun shone fair as ever the changeless sun of an Oregon summer. Not a cloud, not a shower, not a wind, but the still Egyptian lotus-sky above the changeless days. Had the boy Bryant of New England divined this when he wrote,

"Lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound Save his own dashings. Yet the dead are there "?

Forty men lay sick at Fort Vancouver, and wretched Indians at the gates plead for "la medecine." There was no physician but Dr. McLoughlin. His hands were full. He, too, fell sick of the fever and sent his clerks among the sufferers with pockets lined with vials of quinine.

There was an Indian village on Wapato Island at the mouth of the Willamette. For several weeks no one had come from there. Chief Trader Ogden arrived at the fort. "Go over to Wapato and see what is the matter," said Dr. McLoughlin.

"There is something dead in Wapato," said Ogden, as his boats neared the edge of the island. There certainly was a sickish, fetid odor in the air. The oaktrees whispered as they passed. The gleaming alders fluttered their nervous twigs. The willows shook their large oblanceolate leaves with whitened under-edges. The wood-dove mourned in a thicket of young firs. Canoes lay idle on the beach. Nets hung on the willow boughs. Dogs watched, birds carolled, insects hummed and flitted, but no voice came from the village. As Ogden strode forward he saw them lying dead everywhere, all dead but one little slave-boy to whom the