among these Indians that he had no apprehension of their injuring him--yet they attributed, it seems, to him various ills which Providence and their enemies visited upon them, with the lamentable result just mentioned. Rev. H. Spalding and family were made prisoners by another tribe, from whom, however, Mr. Ogden, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had at once repaired to the scene on hearing of the trouble, purchased their release. The light of the gospel had first been brought to the natives of the Columbia some 14 years before this sad occurrence by a young Indian lad, christened Spaganbarry, by the English missionary at Red River, where he with some other sons of chiefs, had been sent in 1825, through the instrumentality of Governor Simpson. He returned in 1832 and subsequently spent some time in instructing his people, but afterwards himself lapsed into a profligate and savage life, according to the testimony of Governor Simpson himself. The Methodist Episcopal mission on the Willamette was begun by the Lees in 1834. In 1836 Dr. Whitman and Rev. H. Spalding with their wives--said to have been the first white women to cross the mountains--had begun their work among the Indians, as did also two Roman Catholic missionaries in 1838--while a chaplain, Rev. Mr. Beaver, and his wife, had come from England to supply the spiritual wants of Fort Vancouver. More than a decade of Christian teaching, it will be seen, had failed to eradicate superstition and savagery from the native character; yet the same spirit which has imbued those who have suffered similarly in Africa and China, in more recent years, has inspired the soldiers of the Cross on the Columbia and its tributaries to persist in their self-sacrificing labours, with what success the present residents of Oregon and Washington can best attest. The difference in appearance and customs, as well as language, between the Indians of the plains east of the mountains and those of the coast was great. Washington Irving attributed--no doubt correctly--the bent legs, corpulent bodies and generally squat appearance of the latter, as compared with the tall, straight figures of many of the natives of the East, to their life as fishermen and mariners, constantly squatting in canoes, while the aborigines of the plains scoured the prairies in the chase. Their disposal of their dead also reflected the character of the coast Indian's life--their cemeteries being collections of elaborately decorated canoes, containing the corpses, and finished with all manner of paraphernalia and provision for the deceased in their future state, in happy _fishing_, rather than _hunting_, grounds. Slavery was rife among the aborigines of the coast, the number of a man's wives and slaves being the two chief items in estimating his importance. The lives of these slaves were completely at the mercy of their owners, who killed them without compunction whenever the occasion seemed to them to call for such a sacrifice.