So it seems fitting that McDonald's Peak and Lake should remain untamed even as their namesake; that the eddying whirlpool of life should pass them by and that in their embrace the native creatures should live and range as of yore. And may it be that within those shadowy gorges, remote from the sight and hearing of man, a wild, white horse goes bounding through the night?
[SOME INDIAN MISSIONS]
[CHAPTER IV]
SOME INDIAN MISSIONS OF THE NORTHWEST
MORE than a century after the Spanish Francescans planted the Cross upon the Pacific shores, the French, Belgian and Italian Jesuits or robes noires, took their way into the Northwestern wilderness in response to a cry from the people who lived within its solitudes. Civilization follows the highways of intercourse with the outer world, so the Western coast had passed through the struggle of its beginnings and entered into a period of prosperity and peace, while that territory with the Rocky Mountains as its general center, was still as primeval as when the galleons of Juan de Fuca sailed into Puget Sound.
The mellowness of old romance, the warmth of Latin colour, hang over the Missions of California. The pilgrim lingers reverently in their cloistered recesses, breathing the scent of orange blossoms, reposing in the shade of palm and pepper trees. With the song of the sea in his ears and its sapphire glint in his eye he re-lives the olden days, weaves for himself out of imagination's threads, a picture as harmonious in its tones of faded rose and gray as an ancient tapestry. How much the architectural beauty of these Missions has brought them within the affectionate regard of the people it is hard to say, but undoubtedly it has had an influence. The graceful lines of arch and pillar, the low, broad sweep of roof and corridor, the delicate, yellowish-white of the adobe outlined against a sky of royal blue, stir the sleeping sense of beauty in our hearts and make us pause to worship at such favoured shrines.
It is for precisely the opposite reason that we are drawn to the Missions of the Northwest. Austere, ascetic in form, they make their appeal because of their unadorned simplicity. They were originally the plainest structures of logs, added to as occasion demanded and always constructed of such homely materials as the surrounding country could yield. Hands unaccustomed to other labours than telling the rosary or making the sign of the Cross, hewed forest trees and wrought in wood the symbol of their teaching. No wonder, then, that the buildings were small and crude, but their lack of grandeur was the best testimony to the sacrifice and noble purpose of which they were the emblems. Overlooked, isolated they stand, passed by and all but unknown. Yet they are monuments of heroic achievement and devotion; brave men risked their lives willingly to lay these foundation stones of the faith; bitter struggles were fought and won in their consecrated shadows and upon them is the glamour of thrilling episode.
During the seventeenth century a little band of French missionaries of the order of St. Ignatius journeyed from their native France to Canadian territory with the purpose of spreading the word of God amongst the savages of that benighted land. One of them, Father Ignace Jogues, became the apostle of the Iroquois and died at their hands, a martyr. Strangely enough, his teachings lived after him and were preserved in a measure, at least, by those who had murdered him because of the message he brought.