Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1890-04-24

How much better it will be attended to
and how much time it gives us in which
to mind our own business! That young
man, when he got to the mouth of the
Columbia, was the most untenanted and
deserted and absolutely unfurnished man
/ ever saw.
He wanted to die. but l told him it
would not be right. went in to see him
frequently. / would most always take
him some Vienna sausages and boiled
cabbage, with hot doughnuts or some
little delicacy like that, and while they
shed their gentle fragrance through his
hot, close state room, l would speak to
him of his lost and undone condition in
low, passionate tones, meantime smoking
rich, brown cob pipe loaded with dog
leg tobacco.
i often think yet of the hopeless look
on his face and wonder if, after all, dur
ing that terrible voyage, my gentle pres
ence socked single ray of sunshine into
his otherwise dark and cherries life.
1t was terrible storm. We did not
realize it fully at the time, but afterward,
while on shore, refitting and refurnish-
ing ourselves, we found out that it had
been very severe gale, and that the
Sound steamer Umatilla had suffered
considerably. and if a Sound steamer
would suffer at such q time what could
you expect of an unsound one? But we
will let that pass.
The mouth of the Columbia is one of the
most active and dangerous, if we except
that OF Corporal Tanner, perhaps, that
| have ever met up with. Looking into
it on that Sabbath morning l judged the
river to be about fourteen thousand years
of age. And yet its teeth are very good.
We could see them distinctly.
AT daybreak l rose, as is my custom,
TO examine the sun, and also to see the
practical joker busting off the coating of
his stomach by means of whisk broom,
and to our left the shaggy brow of Cape
Disappointment doomed up in the cold
gray of the early morning. The yellow
waters of the Columbia came down to
salute the deep blue of the Pacific, and
over the Bar the white breakers mingled
their spray with the threatening sky.
1t is a nasty place to ride over even
when you are feeling well, but if one has
been i'll and has not yet recovered, one
almost wishes that the ship would go 10
the bottom and not be too dilatory about
it, either. SO the practical joker told me
for | was not ill at all. | took my meals
frequently and ate them in his room. Al
night | would, before going to bed, cal
some crackers and Swiss cheese by his
bedside, while l read to him page after
page of Robert Elsmere." When he reads
this fear sometimes that he will almost
hate me. And yet l amNnot maliciou,
myself. | love everybody. Almost
And l try to make their lives happier, il
l can. | shed sunshine wherever | 90,
sometimes.
We rode along with a primary school
of whales the last day. There must haze
been dozen of them. y man who anew
everything, having been associated two
or three weeks with the Rev. Joseph
Cook, said they ere right whales.
do not know now he could tell, for YOU
couldn't see particle of the whale ex-
cept the squirt of water which marked
his locality. But some men are so able
that at times it must give them great
physical pain.
He told me all about whales and every
thing else. did not know that whales
were rights and lefts, but it seems that
they are. Whale oil is not used in salad
dressing any more. The whale is nam
NAL. | would rather be right whale
than to be president. The female whale
does not lay eggs like the fish, but pro-
duces her young alive like the Piute In
dian and other brutes. She nurses her
own young, especially if help should be
scarce, and sometimes becomes the head
of quite a family.
The father, however, is quite migra-
tory and irresponsible to degree
Whales live to great age and lead a
very wet and uneventful life. They are
taken with the harpoon.