short  of  that  refinement  and  pnrity  possible  only  through  the
influence  of  a  noble  womanhood.  The  Christianity  of  the
French  missionaries  had  done  little  to  influence  the  conduct  of
the  French  voyageurs,  and  it  could  have  still  less  effect  upon  the
Indians.  So  here  we  are  to  come  into  the  presence^  not  of  a
Christianity  without  morals,  but  one  whose  very  basis  is  true
refinement  and  solid  character."

And  now  there  comes  to  relieve  the  tedium  of  our  narrative,
if  wearying  it  should  be  found,  a  little  glimpse  of  romance,  or,
I)erhaps,  we  should  rather  call  it  reality,  that  reality  strongest
of  all,  of  a  Christian  woman's  brave  endurance  of  every  danger
and  trial  in  the  cause  of  duty  and  devotion  to  the  husband  of
her  love.
"  Dr.  Whitman's  betrothed  was  ready  to  go  on  a  wedding
journey  of  thirty-five  hundred  miles  to  the  Pacific.  No  woman
had  ever  gone  through  those  wild  and  rocky  mountain  fast-
nesses, no  wagon  wheel  had  ever  passed  through  its  deep  can-
yons. The  Indians  had  been  so  incensed  by  the  outrages  of
brutal  white  men  that  they  were  dangerous.  Yet  Dr.  Whit-
man's bride  dared  to  go.  He  sought  for  a  comrade,  and  found
one  in  Rev.  H.  H.  Spaulding,  who,  like  himself,  was  just  mar-
ried, and  on  his  way  as  a  missionary  to  the  Osage  Indians-
Whitman  literally  ran  after  him,  stopping  his  novel  conveyance,
half  sleigh,  half  wagon  (with  a  touch  of  the  prairie  schooner),
and  proposed  that  he  should  go  with  him  to  the  end  of  the  earth
(as  it  then  seemed),  to  a  land  of  silence  and  of  savages.  Mr.
