Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/98

74 have lured a multitude to misery. The little story I relate, however, tells its own moral in its simple facts, and needs few words to impress its beautiful lessons.

Mrs. Whitman thus describes the great farm and its surroundings. I have many times wandered over the old place, and cannot better describe it than to insert a note from her diary:

""It is a lovely situation. We are on a level peninsula formed by the two branches of the Walla Walla River. Our house stands on the southeast shore of the main river. To run a fence across, from river to river, will inclose three hundred acres of good land, and all directly under the eye. Just east of the house rises a range of low hills, covered with bunch grass almost as rich as oats, for the stock. The Indians have named the place 'Waiilatpui,' the place of the rye grass.""

Upon one of the highest of those hills in the East, which Mrs. Whitman refers to, the pioneers of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho recently erected a stately marble monument to Whitman, and at its base is "the great grave" containing the remains of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, and twelve others who perished in the massacre, which will be referred to more particularly in another chapter.

Dr. Whitman regarded it his first duty to plan to live in comfort, and set his Indians a good example. He toiled day and night in making his arrangements to plant and sow in the early spring months. The Indians flocked about the