RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 245 their feelings, thoughts and desires. They are so much in the habit of speech from infancy up that they are unconscious of its life and growth, and how sadly deficient they would be as social beings if it were not for that medium of communication. Although I had spent much time in and out of school, striving to become proficient in the use of my mother tongue, and had delved somewhat into the written language of the Latins, I never really waked up to the great sphere which language occupies in human .life, until I got to the West Coast and fre- quently found myself among human beings with whom I could hold no converse except by inarticulate grunts or visible signs. It is the lack of an absolutely essential thing which enables one to measure its value. Shortly after arriving in the Willamette Valley, I was traveling in a part sparsely settled by white people, and meeting a company of mounted Indians, desired to inquire the way to the point I wished to reach. As it was near night- fall and I had neither food, blankets, nor matches to light a fire, I felt quite anxious to know something of distances and direction in this new country, without guide boards and plainly traveled roads. I was ignorant of their language and they knew not mine. Fortunately they knew the names of the most noted white settlers among the older residents and when I mentioned one, they pointed in the direction and tracing by gesture the course of the sun from the meridian to the horizon gave me to understand that for a footman, as I was, it was a half day's travel. For the first time in my life I began to comprehend the value of articulate language. One Indian uttered along with his pantomime, the words, "wake siah, clatawa sitcum sun," the Chinook, as I afterwards learned, for "not far, half day's travel." This circumstance convinced me of the necessity of acquir- ing a use of the Chinook language, so that I could have the benefit of the knowledge gained by the natives to the soil. It was not, however, a difficult task to become acquainted with enough of it to meet practical demands, and there were numerous occasions when it was especially serviceable. I was
