asked by the captain whether he could climb a mast, and he immediately proceeded to show that he could, and ascended to the topmast on the bare pole, climbing hand over hand. It happened to be a windy day, and the brig was rolling somewhat in the swell, and when the boy looked down from his lofty elevation, he was made almost dizzy by observing how small the vessel below him looked in the wide stream. But upon reaching deck again, he was complimented by both sailors and captain as being made of stuff fit for a sailor.
Indeed, Lambert seems to have been very well pleased with him, and offered him a passage on his ship to Boston, and a return, either by land or sea, and to this his parents were almost persuaded to give their consent, but at the last moment could not quite bring themselves to do this. Sometimes he was invited by the captain to take dinner, and amused the officers by his sturdy refusal to take anything to drink—perhaps as much from suspicion as from set conviction—though the better class of men on the Columbia at that time greatly deprecated the use of intoxicants and were largely temperate, and the boy very likely had imbibed these ideas.
He remembers Lambert as large and powerful, and full bodied; of dark hair and complexion, and "a good man." Nathaniel Wyeth, whom he also saw, was florid, light-haired and blue-eyed, but also large, and perhaps even finer looking than Lambert.
Game at Scappoose and on the ponds of Sauvie's Island was very abundant, consisting of deer, elk and bear, and panthers and wildcats; and beaver were still plentiful; but the waterfowl of the most magnificent kind, at their season of passage, and, indeed, during much of the year, almost forbade the hunter to sleep. Labonte remembers one winter season in particular when there was a snowfall of about sixteen inches, and in the
