II
THE COMING OF THE WHITMANS
1836
WHEN Wyeth was returning defeated to the States he met a vision in the mountains, a beautiful woman with golden hair and snowy brow, riding like Joan of old to conquest,—Narcissa Whitman. With her rode Eliza Spalding, a slender, dark-eyed devotee, who back in the States had knelt in a lonely wayside inn to consecrate her heart to Oregon. Two brides were on that wonderful journey, farther than flew the imperial eagles of Rome, to their life-work on the Columbia.
Two brides!—there is a romance about modern missions that the apostolic fathers never knew—two missionary brides were the first white women to cross the continent!
Two grooms, knights-errant, rode at their sides: Marcus Whitman, a young physician, strong, resolute, with fire in his deep blue eyes and courage imprinted on every feature to the tips of his auburn curls, he, too, had heard of the Flathead messengers for the white man's Book of the Great Spirit; Henry Spalding, a youth long, lank, prematurely wrinkled and sharp-featured with thought, he, too, was fired with apostolic ardor. While yet a student in a village academy, Henry Spalding had bent the knee and begged the hand of Narcissa Prentice. To him and to every other
