Page:Cathlamet On the Columbia.djvu/153

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floated by with crowing chickens. One young Indian attracted by the neat look of some white painted beehives that came floating by on the platform of on old outhouse, took one aboard his canoe. A moment after he went howling overboard, and when he was pulled ashore and emptied of the water that had poured into him, expressed his opinion in unvarnished terms of the white people who put up hornets in white boxes. "Hiyu Mesatchie," and then, as the Indian vocabulary failed, "D—n Mesatchie." As for the beehive and the canoe, they went sailing out over the bar, and so far as any one knows, these bees are the same ones that are now making the beeswax that washes up every now and then from the Pacific Ocean.

It was a gorgeous time, and when the flood of wealth was over the Indians of the lower