Page:Cathlamet On the Columbia.djvu/66

 dian woman. They knew every berry bush and patch anywhere within reaching distance and knew just how and when to gather them, and Olallies (berries) formed a great part of the Indian food supply.

To the people who knew it the forest was a magnificent granary of food, and perhaps one of the most pitiful stories of the West is that of a party of Eastern men fleeing panic-stricken from anticipated starvation, leaving their comrades to die by the way, because a little snow flurry and a little hunger met them in the woods. The mountains and the great forest were strange and terrifying to them. Had they been Indians or Western and forest- trained men they would have come out at their leisure, hungry and thin, half starved and hollow down to their boots, perhaps, but still all together.