peak poised against peak. This lake was the Selish's conception of the greatest of waters, for their wandering never took them to the Atlantic or Pacific Seas, and in such small craft as they used to travel over the forty miles of water among serpentining shores, the distance must have seemed immense. Many islands rise from the lake, the largest of them, Wild Horse Island, is timbered and mountainous, and so big as to appear like an arm of the main land. This Wild Horse Island, where in olden days bands of wild horses were found, possesses a peculiar interest. Upon its steep cliffs are hieroglyphics traced in pigments unknown to-day, telling the forgotten story of a lost race. The same strange figures appear upon the sheer escarpments of the mainland shore. These rock-walls are moss-grown and colored by the lichen, chrome yellow, burnt orange, russet-brown and varying shades of bronze-green like Autumn leaves, and upon them broods a shadow as darkly impenetrable as the mystery which they hold. Still, it is easy to distinguish upon the heroic tablets of stone, crude figures of horses and some incomprehensible marks. These writings have been variously interpreted or guessed at. Some declare them to be ancient war signals of the Selish, others suggest that they were records of hunting parties left behind for the guidance and information of the tribe; but they, themselves, deny all knowledge of them, saying that to them as to us, the pictured rocks are a wonder and a riddle, the silent evidence of foot-falls so remote that not even an echo has come down to us through the centuries. Such are the valley of Sin-yal-min and the Lake of the Flathead where the Selish hunted. But their real home, the seat of their fathers, was the Bitter Root Valley, where one branch of the tribe, headed by Charlot, the son of Victor, lived until the recent exodus. Therefore, the Bitter Root Valley was particularly dear to the hearts of these Indians. It was there the bond between the kindred tribes, the Nez Percés and the Selish, was broken; there the pioneer Fathers came to build the first Mission and plant the first Cross among these docile children of the wood. It was there they clung together like frightened sheep until they were driven forth to seek new homes in the Valley of the Jocko, which was to be merely a station in their enforced retreat. Eastward and southward from the Bitter Root, the Jocko and the range of Sin-yal-min in the contested country, is a cañon called the Hell Gate, because within its narrow limits, the Blackfeet wreaked vengeance upon their less warlike foes. Flowing through the cañon is a river, _In-mis-sou-let-ka_, corrupted into Missoula, which bears one of the most beautiful of the Selish legends. * * * * *