The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-07-10

our young braves One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in the darkness and they will go on the long path to other hunt ing grounds. No white man will go with them and no white mans book to make the way plain. I have no more words"
 Whitman's Response.
 It was the publication of these words copied in the eastern papers, that made Marcus Whitman heed the call of the Neg Perces Indians; 1t was the publi-
 cation of these words that nerved Whit
 man to consecrate all his life to giving the
 ITlathead Indians the white mans Book
 of Life" It was that resolve to go in the name of Christ to the far northwest which made it possible for Marcus Whit
 man to save Oregon to the union.
 Marcus Whitman did not go to the banks of the Columbia to save Oregon
 for the union He went to the north
 west to save the red men for Christ.
 When God calls us to one sphere of work
 he will always open for us other spheres of labor if we will only obey his first call which says: Come! Comel Come | now!"
 But Marcus Whitman was a statesman as well as a humble gospel missionary. Like Livingstone, In Africa he saw how
  the resources of civilization. His pro- rhetic gaze traveed on through the cen- turies, and he longed to have that fair region under Christian influences and
 prospering under the white mans skill and industry. He could hear the tramp
 of the oncoming generations. as we'll as the creaking of his cart wheels by his side. Therefore, when Marcus Whitman on the famous Fourth of July 1886, with his young bride spread the blankets upon the top of the Rock mountains, with Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson stand ing afar off as guarding sentinels, and dedicated that western soil of God and his native land, like Paul, he was surrounded by great cloud of witnesses. In inspir- ed vision he could see the farmers of 1904 planting these seeds. in those valleys He could see those mighty forests changed into homes and factories and stores ana libraries and schools and churches. He could hear the singing of the moving
 machines and see the white winged ships like great sea Eulls floating in those har- bors. And as Columbus took possession of the new world in the names of Ferdi- hand and Isabella who fitted out his this western soil to his two masters-to his God and to the United States govern rnent.
 Battles He Fought.
 He dedicated this western soil in spite of the fact that all that could be said to discourage settlers had been said in calumnious disparagement The Hudson Bay company wanted it left in the undis- turbed possession of the wild animals whose skins they were turning into gold. They wanted 1t for a perpetual hunting ground. Therefore. they declared 1t to be land barred by impossible ranges of mountains. land of undrainable moras- ses. pestiential and malarial. unfit for the residence of white men. a land given up to barbarism and Indian savagery. So persistent were the falsehoods dis scminated by these greedy, selfish capi taists that before Marcus Whitmans 8 advent Oregon had been lying like the capstone of the Jerusalem temple which the builders rejected. but which after wards became the chief of the corner All the national statesmen. both trans and cis-Atlantic cared no more for it than q pearl diver would care to carry around with him cobblestone, or a diamond merchant would care to preserve an ordi- nary pebble among his precious jewels. Why, so useless was this Oregon region considered in 1S42 that Daniel Webster, then premier of President Tylers cabi- net was willing to barter off to Lorn , Ashburton the whole of the far north- west for few privileges of the Amer ican sailors to fish for cod off the banks of Newfoundlan. A few years before this to prove his utter ignorance of the in trinsic value of this land of the north- west, Daniel Webster. then the mosl powerful member of the United States senate. uncontroverted by Clay and Call