A valley of Washington. "The big Westland smiles and receives them all"
From a photograph by Frank Palmer, Spokane, Wash.
A friend, who knew the girl and the story, and loves the land she hoped to see, wrote this to hearten her when the doctors realized that the home upon whose threshold she wavered was far, far distant from the one her lover fashioned "over the eastern mountains":
Over the eastern mountains
Into a valley I know,
Into the air of uplands,
Into the sun, you go.
Warm is a day in the upland;
Warm is the valley, and bright;
Glittering stars are shining
Over the valley at night.
Here in the western lowland
Patiently I remain,
Under the clouds, in darkness,
Under the dismal rain.
Patient I wait, well knowing
The joy that is to be:
Into the east you're going
To build a home for me.
Rather would I go with you,
But, staying, I smile and sing,
For winter is almost over,
And soon will come the spring.
Then to the home you have made me,
Singing, still singing, I'll go
Over the eastern mountains
Into a valley I know.
CHAPTER VII
On Oregon Trails
T Shaniko I denied being a land seeker. Yet such I actually was, although seeking
Oregon, a land of plenty
Where one dollar grows to twenty