I write these last lines on Sauvie's Island--the Wappatto of the Indians,--sitting upon the bank of the river, beneath the gnarled and ancient cottonwood that still marks the spot where the old Columbia trail led up from the water to the interior of the island. Stately and beautiful are the far snow-peaks and the sweeping forests. The woods are rich in the colors of an Oregon autumn. The white wappatto blooms along the marshes, its roots ungathered, the dusky hands that once reaped the harvest long crumbled into dust. Blue and majestic in the sunlight flows the Columbia, river of many names,--the Wauna and Wemath of the Indians, the St. Roque of the Spaniards, the Oregon of poetry,--always vast and grand, always flowing placidly to the sea. Steamboats of the present; batteaux of the fur traders; ships, Grey's and Vancouver's, of discovery; Indian canoes of the old unknown time,--the stately river has seen them all come and go, and yet holds its way past forest and promontory, still beautiful and unchanging. Generation after generation, daring hunter, ardent discoverer, silent Indian,--all the shadowy peoples of the past have sailed its waters as we sail them, have lived perplexed and haunted by mystery as we live, have gone out into the Great Darkness with hearts full of wistful doubt and questioning, as we go; and still the river holds its course, bright, beautiful, inscrutable. It stays; _we go_. Is there anything _beyond_ the darkness into which generation follows generation and race follows race? Surely there is an after-life, where light and peace shall come to all who, however defeated, have tried to be true and loyal; where the burden shall be lifted and the heartache shall cease; where all the love and hope that slipped away from us here shall be given back to us again, and given back forever. _Via crucis, via lucis._ * * * * * Transcriber's note: Variations in the spelling of the Molalla Indian tribe have been retained. Missing or extra quotation marks and minor inconsistencies of punctuationwere silently corrected. However, punctuation has not been changed to comply with modern standards. Inconsistency in hyphenation also has been retained. Footnotes have been renumbered consecutively and placed at the end of each chapter. Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. All missing page numbers were intentionally omitted in the original publication. Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as printed in the original book except for the following changes: List of Illustrations: Multomah's changed to Multnomah's (Multnomah's Death-canoe) Page 137: that changed to than (No one knows this better than Multnomah.) Page 261: or changed to on (To the funeral pyre on _mimaluse_ island.)