[1] Shipwrecks of Asiatic vessels are not uncommon on the Pacific Coast, several having occurred during the present century,--notably that of a Japanese junk in 1833, from which three passengers were saved at the hands of the Indians; while the cases of beeswax that have been disinterred on the sea-coast, the oriental words that are found ingrafted in the native languages, and the Asiatic type of countenance shown by many of the natives, prove such wrecks to have been frequent in prehistoric times. One of the most romantic stories of the Oregon coast is that which the Indians tell of a buried treasure at Mount Nehalem, left there generations ago by shipwrecked men of strange garb and curious arms,--treasure which, like that of Captain Kidd, has been often sought but never found. There is also an Indian legend of a shipwrecked white man named Soto, and his comrades (See Mrs. Victor's "Oregon and Washington"), who lived long with the mid-Columbia Indians and then left them to seek some settlement of their own people in the south. All of these legends point to the not infrequent occurrence of such a wreck as our story describes. [2] Indian name of the Nez Percés. CHAPTER IV. SENDING OUT THE RUNNERS. Speed, Malise, speed; the dun deer's hide On fleeter foot was never tied; Herald of battle, fate and fear Stretch around thy fleet career. SCOTT. At early morning, the sachems had gathered in the council-grove, Multnomah on the seat of the war-chief, and twenty runners before him. They were the flower of the Willamette youth, every one of royal birth, handsome in shape and limb, fleet-footed as the deer. They were slender and sinewy in build, with aquiline features and sharp searching eyes. Their garb was light. Leggins and moccasins had been laid aside; even the _hiagua_ shells were stripped from their ears. All stood nerved and eager for the race, waiting for the word that was to scatter them throughout the Indian empire, living thunderbolts bearing the summons of Multnomah. The message had been given them, and they waited only to pledge themselves to its faithful delivery. "You promise," said the chief, while his flashing glance read every messenger to the heart, "you promise that neither cougar nor cataract nor ambuscade shall deter you from the delivery of this summons; that you will not turn back, though the spears of the enemy are thicker in your path than ferns along the Santiam? You promise that though you fall in death, the summons shall go on?" The spokesman of the runners, the runner to the Chopponish, stepped forward. With gestures of perfect grace, and in a voice that rang like a silver trumpet, he repeated the ancient oath of the Willamettes,--the oath used by the Shoshones to-day.