Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/107

The next day we took the one most trodden, as I felt sure this creek was the Walla Walla. We followed the old trail along- the bottoms of the creek. There was some fine timber now, but nothing to eat. We came to an Indian encampment the seventeenth and got some food. Before we came to the Indians, I had proposed to the rest of the party to kill another horse, but hungry as we were, we preferred to push on. The food we got from the Indians consisted of dried bear meat and elder berries, which we bought. I did not feel as ravenous as the other men. who ate until I urged them to stop, for fear of the result. The next day, after a fifteen-mile ride, we arrived at Fort Walla Walla on October 18, where we found Captain Wyeth, who had been there two or three days.

The fort was built of upright timbers set in the ground. The timbers were some fifteen or eighteen feet high. A small stockade, with stations or bastions at the corners for lookouts. The Hudson Bay Company kept a fort here for the trade. There was a clerk and half a dozen men.

We were received kindly, and for the first time since we left the forks of the Platte on June 1 we tasted bread. It was a very interesting and gratifying sight to look on the Columbia (Fort Walla Walla stands where Walla Walla Creek empties into the Columbia) after our long and tedious journey.

The country around was barren. Rain, if they had any, commenced later in the season. There is little or no timber. Wild sage grows from five to six feet high, and is found everywhere on mountains and plains. It has ash colored leaves, and is bitter like the garden sage. Where nothing else is found, it is eaten by buffalo and deer. Here we decided to leave our faithful horses and descend the river in boats, which we began the day after our arrival.

October 19—We took a boat of the Hudson Bay Company and two of their men (Canadians) and started down the river. We soon came to high basaltic bluffs, almost perpendicular, with only a narrow shore of grass and sand. The clear ocean blue water swept us swiftly on. We ascended the bluffs at night and there encamped. We found above a grassy plane, but no timber.

October 20—We encamped on the left shore. The Indians of this section were not so respectable in appearance as those we had seen. They subsisted mainly on bad fish and a few roots. There were snowclad mountains on the south.

October 21—We passed the picturesque rocks rising terrace on terrace. The night of the twenty-second some Indians brought us a nice fat horse to eat for supper, which proved very good. We found many roots and berries, which were also very good. Although we had