roomy kitchen it was), and talking. I don't remember what they said except that my aunt Cynthia, uncle Jesse Applegate's wife, said, "There is going to be a death in the family," or words to that effect. She was standing, and pointing upward, added, "See that raven flying over the camp?" I was lying upon the sand, and hearing the remark, looked up and saw a black bird, a raven or crow, flying about one hundred feet above us and going in the direction of the river. Now this thing of reading the future from the flight of birds was then new to me, and as my aunt's countenance, gesture, and tone of voice, bespoke alarm and distress, the event made a lasting impression upon my mind. And yet the prediction must have been passed over lightly, for when the calamity overtook us a few days after, I never thought of the omen and did not hear any one speak of it.
Occasionally we saw Indians on the river in canoes. Each canoe was wrought of a single log cut from a pine, cedar or fir tree, and excavated mostly by burning, but the finishing work was done with edge tools, originally of stone and bone perhaps, but now of iron and steel. The canoes I saw here on the upper river were shapely, and neatly finished, but quite plain in appearance and generally large enough for only two or three persons. One day, however, a large canoe carrying six or seven natives shot out of a little cove on the north shore, and passing across our bows slowed up, while the man in the bow of the craft, lifting his hand towards his mouth, spoke and said, "Smoke six!" which literally translated is "Tobacco, friend!"
The spokesman was a large stout man with more black in his skin than a red man. His eyes were not really black, but looked at our distance like burnt holes in a blanket. He was bare headed, I do not mean bald headed, but that he wore no unnatural covering on his head. He surely did not need any, for this son of an African sire, and a native daughter of the Walla Walla, Cayuse, Klickitat, Chemomichat, Spokane or Wascopum tribe, had an immense shock of grizzly, almost curly hair, which grew down to his ears and to within an inch of his nose, making his head seem unnaturally large. Some of our party gave them a little tobacco and they passed on. Now, who was this shock-headed heathen? They said he was
