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248 into a cavity made in the middle of my little sack of flour, as this stood open. All the skill required at this point was to wet no more flour than I needed at one meal. The thin slices of meat were soon cooked, and into the boiling kettle I dropped from the wooden spoon the batter I had made. It did not take long to thus get a dinner of soup and drop dumplings, and I have since been served with restaurant soup not nearly so good as that. Moreover, mine was very simply prepared, and no dishes to wash afterwards. If I suffered from lack of variety I have no remembrance of it.

Towards evening the Indians woke up, and I became satisfied there was a cause for the conduct of the chief and his henchman, the married man in whose canoe I had a seat. Neither the chief in the large canoe or the women seemed to know I was there; but with the three men who, under the present arrangement, manned the large canoe it was different. They not only noticed me, but began to find opportunities to speak with me. As they did so I learned that the chief was the big chief of the Walla Wallas; the young woman who was for the time companion of the chief was unmarried, and the tallest of the three young men was her brother, and a medicine man. The other two were slaves of the chief. One of these was a well formed man of average size, and the other a small, alert, active man, whom I heard the chief reprove for noticing me.

I was utterly at a loss at the time to account for this behavior, and, under a feeling of restraint, met it in kind as far as I could. An idea occurred to me, however, and later information confirmed me in its belief. The chief had been to Vancouver to solicit the counsel of Doctor McLoughlin on something connected with the white race and was returning disappointed. From before this date until after 1855 there was but one Walla Walla chief