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Rh proposed journey to the States, openly protested that "it was madness to attempt it at this season of the year." Undoubtedly Captain Grant this time was right, even if Whitman had proved him, to his chagrin, wrong about the wagon in 1836. "It so happened" that a company of scouts just then reached the fort, and confirmed all Captain Grant had said, and more. They reported that the snow in many of the cañons was from ten to twenty feet deep, and badly drifting. The Silent Man listened, and sat thinking. He knew those mountains and cañons, and could readily believe the statement of the scouts, and the old Captain, who was an admirer of Whitman, felt certain that he would give up his dangerous expedition and return home. But he did not yet know his man.

Whitman was face to face with a new problem. As he prayed and pondered, a new inspiration came to him. We have no reason to believe that such an idea had occurred to the missionaries, when discussing the dangers of the journey by the route they knew. We have no knowledge that even Whitman had ever before studied the possibilities of a new and undiscovered way to the States.

The old trappers and scouts sat around the stove swapping stories of bears, mountain-lions, of Indians, and wonderful escapes. Whitman, upon