212 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 



in favorable weather, or even more, if we may 

 trust many accounts; and the minutest particle 

 sprayed upon one's clothes will make them 

 entirely unwearable. Its persistence is equally 

 remarkable and embarrassing. No amount of 

 washing or disinfection, short of destroying the 

 fibre of the cloth, suffices to eradicate the taint. 

 Burying them for any practicable time is of no 

 use, for even if the garments seem at first to be 

 free, heat will bring back strong reminders of the 

 wearer's unsavory experience. Where chloride of 

 lime can be used, the smell can be destroyed, but 

 otherwise time alone will rid one of its presence. 



The Indians of the Upper Columbia valley, 

 by the way, tell a quaint legend of the origin 

 of this savory characteristic of our subject. A 

 few miles below the mouth of the Spokane River, 

 the banks become rocky walls and are strangely 

 broken. "The rocks take all imaginable forms, 

 showing up as pinnacles, terraces, perpendicular 

 bluffs, devils'-slides, and giants' causeways, the 

 whole forming one of the most beautiful, grand- 

 est sights in the universe." Among these is a 

 grayish-white cone, about five hundred feet high, 

 which is a noted landmark, and concerning which 

 the Indians have a legend, of which the skunk 

 is the hero. It has been written down in his 

 report upon the navigation of the Upper Colum- 

 bia, made to the War Department by Lieutenant 

 Thomas W. Symons, U.S.A., as follows: 



